Chainging Button Properties Veeeerrrrry Slow1

[Mike Thomson]

I have been working on a project for Motel reservation system wher I want to display in a graphial look which rooms are occupied, with rooms listed vertically and a range of dates listed horizontally.

The bookings table contains the room and the start and end dates so it is necessary to build the matrix for each unit depicting each day (as opposed to range of days). I have tried verious ways to do this including Crosstab (which does not give me control over cell clicks) and embedded browse on temporary table - which is slow to build for each change of date range.

Having looked at the meehotel example (elsewhere in forum) I thought that a button based approach , where a grid is made from a series of buttons would be the best and fastest way (since this minimises disk/database retriaval). To this end I painstakingly formulated a grid 14 wide and 10 deep (a total of 140 cells).

To my suprise populating this grid to set colours and label text would tak over a second on my pentium 4 system. I gasped as i watched each cell draw individually in a manner that reminded me of the Intel 80286 days.

eg: the same code below
for i = 1 to 14
for j = 1 to 10
s = "B" + alltrim(str(i)) + "_" + alltrim(str(j))
eval (s + ".fill.forecolor") = "Green"
' eval (s + ".text" ) = " "
next j
next i

There must be a beter way to handle this sort of graphical presentation with the performance you would expect from a modern day application.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated. I have attached my working database.

[Ronald Anusiewicz]

RE: Chainging Button Properties Veeeerrrrry Slow1

I had a similar problem when using xbasic to change the properties on numerous objects at the same time. It was very slow. You could watch the properties change one object at a time. When viewed by Cian of Alpha, he knew exactly what was happening and made a change a couple of patches back. I believe the problem had to do with actions happening in both the foreground and background threads. The function 'xbasic_synchronous()' included in the xbasic code would correct this problem.

Now all my forms are fine, even on my old PIII notebook.
Give this a try.

eg: the same code below
xbasic_synchronous()
for i = 1 to 14
for j = 1 to 10
s = "B" + alltrim(str(i)) + "_" + alltrim(str(j))
eval (s + ".fill.forecolor") = "Green"
' eval (s + ".text" ) = " "
next j
next i

[Mike Thomson]

RE: Chainging Button Properties Veeeerrrrry Slow1

Definately better (about 3 times better) - but you can still see the draw processm happening

I cannot see any reference to the xbasic_sychronous() in the help screen or the Xbasic reference - which does make it a bit hard

Shouldn't there be a way to revert Alpha 5 back after the objects have been updated (eg: an xbasic_asynchronous function)- as I dont know what other things may be affected here

At any rate this is probably something that needs documenting

[Peter.Greulich]

RE: Chainging Button Properties Veeeerrrrry Slow1

It is still too slow even w. xbasic_synchronous().

In version 5 it is essentially instantaneous and there is no xbasic_synchronous().

[Ronald Anusiewicz]

RE: Chainging Button Properties Veeeerrrrry Slow1

What I'm about to say is from my distant memory at the Alpha conference.

I had a similar problem. In Alpha 5V5, the changes were instantaneous. In V6, there was a lag. I sat down with Cian and he he saw the problem.

The following is probably erroneous, but it is how I understood what was happening.

There are foreground and background threads running. Because of something they did with the code, your code would be evaluated like 72 times instead of once.

While I was sitting there, Cian changed the source code to V6 and added 'xbasic_synchronous()' to my script. This corrected my problem.

All I can say is that if you feel something is wrong, submit your code as a bug report, attention Cian. The function 'xbasic_synchronous()' is new and may not be in the help files yet.

It works fine for me.

I just downloaded your zip file to look at.

Ron

[Peter.Greulich]

RE: Chainging Button Properties Veeeerrrrry Slow1

As Mike says above, xbasic_synchronous() speeds it up by a factor of 3. But that is still too slow. V5 was much faster. It is an important difference.

[Ronald Anusiewicz]

RE: Chainging Button Properties Veeeerrrrry Slow1

I believe that another reason V6 is slower than V5 is that the objects in V6 have many more properties.

I did try your zip file and 'xbasic_synchronous()' while not instantaneous, was a vast improvement over not using 'xbasic_synchronous()'.

Ron

[Peter.Greulich]

RE: Chainging Button Properties Veeeerrrrry Slow1

I believe that another reason V6 is slower than V5 is that the objects in V6 have many more properties.

It is hard to believe that is the cause.

[Ronald Anusiewicz]

RE: Chainging Button Properties Veeeerrrrry Slow1

Just fooling around, I ran profiler. Unless I'm figuring incorrectly, using xbasic_synchronous() is more than 12 times faster.

Script OnPush
Line Tot Time Cnt Source
========================================================
7 0.000324 2 xbasic_synchronous()
8 0.000150 1 FOR i = 1 TO 14
9 0.000476 14 FOR j = 1 TO 11
10 0.007485 154 s = "B" + alltrim(str(i)) + "_" + alltrim(str(j))
11 0.178546 154 eval (s + ".fill.forecolor") = "Green"
13 0.005163 154 NEXT j
14 0.000376 14 NEXT i
========================================================
========================================================
Script OnPush
Line Tot Time Cnt Source
========================================================
7 0.000152 1 for i = 1 to 14
8 0.000476 14 for j = 1 to 11
9 0.007808 154 s = "B" + alltrim(str(i)) + "_" + alltrim(str(j))
10 2.319032 154 eval (s + ".fill.forecolor") = "Yellow"
12 0.006713 154 next j
13 0.000379 14 next i
========================================================

[Ronald Anusiewicz]

RE: Chainging Button Properties Veeeerrrrry Slow1

You know Peter, all I'm saying is what I was told when I was at the conference.

Geez, don't take it out on me!!

[Peter.Greulich]

RE: Chainging Button Properties Veeeerrrrry Slow1

Ron,

I'm not taking anything out on you.

Peter

[Peter.Greulich]

RE: Chainging Button Properties Veeeerrrrry Slow1

It's 12X faster, but it's still noticably slower than v5.

I'm not picking on you. I'm just hoping that Cian will bestow his compassion on us and get it to where it was in v5.

[G Gabriel]

RE: Chainging Button Properties Veeeerrrrry Slow1

Mike:
Is this what you want?
Gabe

[Mike Thomson]

RE: Chainging Button Properties Veeeerrrrry Slow1

What I want is for it to be faster
But the solutions provided certainly make it better - but not great

Mike

[martinwcole]

RE: Chainging Button Properties Veeeerrrrry Slow1

Here is a form displaying for 3 clients marked for printing labels - single clicking on any object re-does the screen, letting the operator visually select the first label. In version 5 it is instantaneous. In version 6 you can see each object refresh. In version 6 with 'synchronous' you can barely discern the refresh.