Whenever you program your notebook you have taken an approach to solving the problem. The approach is referred to as the algorithm used. Your algorithm may include looping over records or querying records inside of the database directly to obtain the records of interest. Many times, you will select an algorithm early in the process which appears to work adequately. There may be other algorithms which solve the problem in a much more efficient manner.

The largest boost to any programming implementation will come by changing the overall approach to handling. Unfortunately, this is the hardest change to accomplish as redesign and rewrite of your coding is required. And even then, like the other techniques, you need to compare benchmarks of your different approaches to make sure the new approach is better.