InfoPath Dev

We have developed several InfoPath forms with database lookups via rules that are used throughout the country via a shared drive. The forms and (Access) database that stores the queries used to retrieve data (for lookups) are housed on the shared drive. The forms have about 5 data connections. Recently we rolled em out to our London office. The forms load very slow in London.

Is there anything I can do to speed this up...I know moving the data to SQL Server should speed it up but it we do that IT takes the project and we lose our flexibility. Would having this under Sharepoint and Access help,  or is this simply a shortcoming of the Access JET engine...

Thank you.........

If you are just looking up data, secondary data connections than they would probably be faster is they were SP lists, rather than access tables.

However if they are remote, and since you cannot query a secondary source unless it is a web service, then it may not make too much of a difference.  If you could have this data local to the users then they would not be hit with WAN performance.  SO if you could batch update the data periodically and then have their forms grab it locally that might make it better.

Sometimes it helps that rather than loading all dc's on open, that you do not query the data connections until they are needed.  This way the user does not notice as much since the form opens initially faster and then the lag is broken up between field updates or button clicks, etc.

Hi Clay,

Thanks for your response. We post our Infopath forms onto a server here in NY, and the users access fhe forms via OUTLOOK. They go to the OUTLOOK FOLDER and click the form in the email attachement. Would I need different versions of the form-- one with the local data and the other with the network data?

Hey Ed

You could have two versions.

If you have local file servers, maybe with the same mapped drive letter, you could then have a common path for the source data at each location.

If the form is comming via email, they have a local copy in Outlook, it is the secondary data that is being pulled across the atlantic which would be the issue.  If you were using SQL and web services you could redirect to local sources and get better performance as well.