General

Re: Infopath Performance Issue

Clay Fox — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 15:11:08 GMT

I think what you are trying to do is a common scenario, mobile, off-line users, on tablet PC's. You would maybe get slightly better performance using SQL 2005 express but the main problem is how much data you are loading. I would be surprised that they need all of the data everytime, my guess is they are trying to find the data they need. You should be using a primary data connection, do you use linked tables? Sometimes it may work better to have things in multiple forms and have them linked together. Ideally you provide them the minimum information on load and then let them query your main connection, which should be pretty efficient. If you want to send me email with your exact situation I may be able to help you with some ideas on the solution.

Re: Infopath Performance Issue

nikopol — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 09:50:50 GMT

Actually I don't want to display all the items in the dropdown, and to do it I've already used filters (research field) to display only the good ones but it seems that the whole table is loaded anyway...

Re: Infopath Performance Issue

Patrick Halstead — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 09:39:32 GMT

Having a dropdown with several thousand items is a bad practice. You can either break it up into cascading dropdowns or provide some kind of search functionality. In either case, you will need to query the database using a string. We provide the EnumDB Web service free as part of the Free Dev edition of our Database Accelerator for SQL that provides this quary capability using a filter parameter (i.e. no code is required). To do the same thing in Access will require code either on the client or server.

Re: Infopath Performance Issue

nikopol — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 09:34:06 GMT

Sorry for this lack of precision...:) It's a database Access

Re: Infopath Performance Issue

Patrick Halstead — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 09:21:49 GMT

What is the database? Access or SQL?

Re: Infopath Performance Issue

nikopol — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 09:20:08 GMT

Ok, i'm going to explain in depth my issue:
I'm working on Tablet PCs (not really higly-capable) and I'm obliged to have on each tablet PC a database containing lots of items (Internet connection is not always possible despite 3G cards...), and a form using this database.
I just want to optimize all of this!!

Hope this allows you to better understand my problem!?!

Re: Infopath Performance Issue

Patrick Halstead — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 09:06:34 GMT

Hi again,
You shouldn't be downloading massive amounts of data to your client because of the time it takes. Using a middle-tier Web service will reduce the size of data crossing the wire if you pass a filter parameter to it. What are your requirements?

Re: Infopath Performance Issue

nikopol — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 08:58:32 GMT

Hello!

(I would have waited during less than half an hour to ask my first question ;)

So, is the use of servers absolutely necessary? Indeed I'm quasi obliged to work in a local way. Can you confirm that it's possible?? Thanks.

Re: Infopath Performance Issue

nikopol — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 08:33:46 GMT

OK, thank you guys!!!
I'm going to try to solve my problem in this way.
I would probably have lots of questions for you later :)

Maybe you would have examples for me, so as to put myself on the good way?

See you!

Re: Infopath Performance Issue

Patrick Halstead — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 20:56:04 GMT

Hi Nico,
You need our Database Accelerator to filter the items to reduce the amount you are downloading. You can also use it with a button to requery and refresh which will support unload and reload. For a free dev download (with a fully functional EnumDB Web method - completely free for your scenario in Beta version) go to the following link and click Free Dev Download:http://www.qdabra.com/proddetail.asp?prod=QDBXL1. We have a forum devoted to helping people out with this Web Service Suite http://www.infopathdev.com/forums/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=61) or you can just reply here.
Happy trails!

Re: Infopath Performance Issue

nikopol — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 09:36:07 GMT

Hello,

first, thank you for your answers.

rocknbananas:
your solution seems to be very interesting but unfortunately I don't really have skills in C# programming... (I've only already programmed in C and Java, but not really in depth!) :s
Is your solution really complicated or should I try to follow this option??? Maybe a little part of code could help?

clayfox:
I've eactly done what you suggest, and you're right, it allows to load data only when I want, but the problem is that data is never unloaded! And so the follow-up of the form (almost the half) is very slow...

Otherwise, I've tried to look in the manifest.xsf file how the data connection is done and I've found the following expression : "<xsf:queryAction adapter="Articles">" , where Articles is the name of my table. Do you think a handling is possible in this file? I didn't found any explanation about this (excepted :http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb265093.aspx but it's really light)

Any comment/help/advice is welcome!

Nico

Re: Infopath Performance Issue

Clay Fox — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 15:18:32 GMT

Niko,

If the data connection you are refering to is a secondary one, you can uncheck the "load when the form opens" box which is on the last window of the data connection setup. I do this often for performance reasons. This way you control when the data is loaded and only load it when it is necessary. To query a data connection manually you just need to use a rule on a field, or with a condition in open rules, or where ever using the Query type.

Hope this helps.

Re: Infopath Performance Issue

rocknbananas — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 14:12:16 GMT

To solve this issue, I have replaced the DropDownList in my form with a read only textbox to display the user's selection and a button. When the user clicks on the button, a window of selection shows up. This window has been written in C# and is in a dll (I can use it in all my InfoPath forms now).

This implies that the data is loaded only when the user clicks on the button, and that the ressources are released when the window is closed.

Hope this helps.
Cheers

Re: Infopath Performance Issue

nikopol — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 13:45:58 GMT

Nobody to help me? Please!!!
:)

Nico.

Re: Infopath Performance Issue

nikopol — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 17:14:44 GMT

Hi everybody,

I have the same problem : I have to fill a dropdown list with several thousands items (~7000) and this takes a lot of time and CPU resources. But it couldn't be a problem if I could have a button "Disconnection" or something like that, which allows to cut the link with the database for the follow-up of the form.

So is it possible to stop the link with a database to optimize the global performances???

Thanks a lot in advance.

Nicolas.