Hi everyone...

so I've got a couple of webforms (AddItem and EditItem) that do straight
forward record creation and editing. The problem is that on the form, is a
DropDownList that has to query a slow datasource (propietary) for its
values... it takes about 15 seconds to load the form.

My question is, what techniques can I use to speed this up? Here's what
I've thought about:

- cache the query results into a dataset somehow... this would mean that I'd
have to periodically refresh the data, so what events (techniques) are best
used to do this?

- thread the query somehow so that the page loads and the dropdownlist
(which is further down the page) gets updated when the query is done.

Thanks,
Michael

You can put the dropdown into a user control & do partial page output
caching to cache that control.

You can cache the dataset & assign an expiration value to it. The expiration
would be based on how often the data is updated. You could also use cache
dependencies also. Your code would check to see if the item was in the
cache, if it wasn't, it would requery the database & populate the cache
again.

You could also do an ansynchronous type of thing -- have your page
dynamically load a javascript file that's actually an ASPX page (e.g.
filldataset.aspx), and that ASPX page would access the database & returns
javascript commands to dynamically populate a dropdown. Search on
"dynamically load javascript" on google to learn more about it.

I vote for #2. Do some reading on MSDN/gotdotnet/etc to get more background.

--
Ben Strackany
www.developmentnow.com

<a href="http://www.developmentnow.com">dn</a>


"Michael Reinhart" <nope (AT) nope (DOT) com> wrote