InfoPath Dev

Hi there,

I am experiencing a perfomance problem with a browser-enabled form. The form loads pretty fast, but switching between different fields of the form takes 2-3 seconds. So if a user fills in a text box and clicks into the next text box, it takes the form 2-3 seconds to switch to that text box. If a user connects via VPN from outside the building, switching between the fields takes 3-10 seconds depending of the speed of the user's computer / connection speed.

The Form has a few "on Form Load" database connections and one calculation inside the form. As I set the connections up to pre-load the data on form load and the form loads very quick, it shouldn't have something to do with my data connections right ? Info about my form : A repeating table has about 8 fields, where the user can input data. Four user-details fields in the header are pre-poppulated, when loading the form(this works fast an like a charm). There is no form code behind the form. So this is no huge form.

I already diabled the postback function of every field, but this made no difference to the performance.

This is really frustrating. Any ideas, what is causing these perfomance issues ?

Does it have a lag when in the InfoPath clients instead of the browser?

Have you done other browser forms? To verify it is not a web server performance issue?

Also verify you have no rules or filters on the dropdowns.  Typically I would say it is either doing validation or making a calculations as one field is left or the other is entered.

I would probably build a test prototype, and keep adding content and then testing (repeat) until the performance degrades and then you would know what was causing it.  Brute force but usually effective.

You need to have the latest patches and I'd recommend using the beta SP1.  The beta SP1 has a few changes to the core.js file that are extremely important and for us made the forms run 2-3 times faster.  Also KB933566 is very important.

C# code runs quickly but rules and validation can impact form performance significantly.  Even one rule that never gets called can make the form run at half speed. 

Look at the CPU level on the PC running IE7.  If it goes to 100% then it is form related, not web server related.

Hi there,

thanks for your replies.  The preformance inside the LAN and/or inside the Infopath client is okay. It seems everytime when changing to another textbox in the form the form sends and receives a lot of data back and forth to the server. But I am wondering what data it is, because all data connections load on form load.

@jlehew
I am using no code behind, but have like 10 Form-Rules and 5 Validations on the form. But I cannot live wihout these rules and validations.

Which patches do you mean? Microsoft Update installs patches automatically over night onto our servers, so the server is the latest (official) patch level.  I cannot find any information about a SP1 for Office Server 2007 . I only found the following unofficial hotfix form Microsoft : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937206/en-us This Hotfix should fix slow performance of browser - based forms.

I will try to install this hotfix and maybe it will help me. I will tell you, what happened after installation :-)

That patch you found is very important.  That has a change that increases performance by 2 to 3 times.  The SharePoint SP1 Beta has another change that improves memory leaks if I remember correctly.  It doesn't eliminate them but greatly improves them.  We had to manually change these files to fix which was very difficult to find and fix.

Also have to make sure the clients are up to date as well.  There is a patch that InfoPath needs from July 07 and it comes down with the standard Windows Updates.

John

Hi again,

this hotfix really increased the performance. It could be even more faster, but this current performance will already decrease my colleagues's complains a lot I hope. By the way, when will the Sharepoint Service Pack 1 be released ? I am hoping of even more performance with this SP :-)

Bjoern

I've already done a diff on the .js files in SP1 beta and it doesn't have anything that looks like it will improve performance from the hotfixes we already applied.  Predicting when it will be released is futile.

Now if MS could fix the memory leak with rich text boxes...

John