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WebGrid performance with large data source

yudi — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 07:13:36 GMT

Isn't IE6 a supported browser of WebGrid 6?

Both WebGrid 6 and WebGrid 7 (the latest version of WebGrid, currently) are compatible with Internet Explorer 6.

Are 3500 rows just too much for a web application / for WebGrid?

This issue is actually not WebGrid’s issue. It is caused by the rendering engine that belongs to the Internet Explorer itself. Render a table that has 3500 rows is not that easy for web application. Not only WebGrid, but I believe event an html table itself.

Is there any big difference with a newer WebGrid version? If yes, what times do you get there with IE6 client?

When users expanded a group row, WebGrid loads the child rows on demand via AJAX callback and then seamlessly inject it into the group row element. This gives users the feel of working with desktop apps.

Everything is good until your users accidentally grouped a data resulting with large amount of rows per group. It becomes worse when the Grid is working in client-binding since the rendering operation is done in the client-side. Imagine looping through thousands of records to perform string-extensive operations, the browser itself naturally refuse to complete the operation. And hence, you’ll get a prompt that ask you whether you want to stop or continue the script. Although you can choose to continue the script, it will still take several seconds to complete. This is certainly not a desirable result for most of today’s users who expecting applications with rich experiences.

WebGrid development team has implemented the VirtualLoad paging capability. When enabled, virtual load retrieves only the first subset of data and then smartly loads the rest records as user scroll downward.

With the new group row paging capability, you no longer have to worry how much data your Grid is presenting, whether they are grouped or not, whether they are filtered or not, WebGrid will display your data in the same timely fashion – consistently.

However, this kind of feature is not available yet for self-reference structure. It is planned to be implemented in next year. So there should be no big difference between WebGrid 6 and the newer WebGrid version.

For more detail about this feature, please check this post at following link, http://intersoftpt.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/virtual-group-paging-with-client-binding-in-depth/.

Hope this helps.

WebGrid performance with large data source

yudi — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 20:37:22 GMT

I’ve checked your sent sample and managed to reproduce the issue on my local test.
I need more time to investigate the problematic behavior. I’ll keep you updated with news regarding this issue.

WebGrid performance with large data source

Eric — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 12:19:20 GMT

Thanks for your post A Yousif. We are using CSS already as you can see in the sample I attached in my original post, so there is nothing to improve. We cannot show less data - all rows are needed at once. We even need to be able to sort them several times by different columns. So I still like to hear an official statement from Intersoft.

To repeat my final question to Intersoft here:

In short, can you tell me:

Isn't IE6 a supported browser of WebGrid 6?
Are 3500 rows just too much for a web application / for WebGrid?
Is there any big difference with a newer WebGrid version? If yes, what times do you get there with IE6 client?

Please also consult your sales department before answering. Thanks.

WebGrid performance with large data source

PRISMAY — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 11:51:40 GMT

We had a similar problem (see this post) which was resolved with CSS classes. If you're not using CSS classes to configure your grid, you'll need to do that. We had a dramatic boost in performance after this.

Note that IE is VERY slow when using DOM when it comes to large arrays. There is no getting around it unless you replace all the HTML yourself which wouldn't really be something you'd want to do with this control as it defeats its purpose. I'd recommend sticking with smaller rows loaded by default and then give the user the option to load more or to configure how many rows they want to load.

Good luck.

WebGrid performance with large data source

Eric — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 11:07:59 GMT

We are using .NET Framework 2.0 with AJAX extensions (AjaxControlToolkit v1.0.10606.0, AJAXExtensionsToolbox v1.0.61025.0), Intersoft framework 3.0.5000.705, WebGrid 6.0.7200.220 and all clients have IE6. My PC is a dual-processor, 3GB RAM, Intel 1.66GHz T2300 Dell Notebook.

Attached you find the sample we worked out in another thread, actually just a simple load-on-demand grid with a simple hierarchical structure (about ten folders) containing a few data rows. One folder contains a little more data. I've set it to 3500 rows, which shouldn't be exagerated. This matches our requirements.

When running the sample, it takes about 27 minutes just to open the folder. During this time IE6 is at 100% CPU running JavaScript. This is inacceptable long. For big data sets about 10-20 seconds could maybe be acceptable.

Just as a test, I tried the sample with Firefox 3.6.3. The folder opens in 50 seconds there. That's also very slow, but still much faster. In contrary to IE, in Firefox after opening the folder the scrolling mechanism is so slow that it's unusable. In IE it takes a long time at the beginning, but afterwards scrolling works fine. In this Firefox test, during these 50 seconds I received a message that there was a long-running script, asking me to cancel. I pressed Continue. Firefox was just a test - our users all have IE6 and might upgrade to IE8 at some time in the future.

I'd like to mention that there is no database delay included, as all data rows are generated hardcoded (randomized in a loop). For real-world applications you have to add database access times also.

What is the problem? I know that IE6 is slow in JavaScript handling. But this is not a big amount of data. I also tried to enable paging view, but it seems not to work with this type of grid. Is 3500 rows just too much for a web page?

In short, can you tell me:

Isn't IE6 a supported browser of WebGrid 6?
Are 3500 rows just too much for a web application / for WebGrid?
Is there any big difference with a newer WebGrid version? If yes, what times do you get there with IE6 client?

Please also consult your sales department before answering. Thanks.