poor performance 1

[SteveHall]

I've written a system in VB6/Access 2000 for a client to replace a FoxPro 2.6 system.
Developing and testing on a stand alone pc the response times are as I would expect - more or less instant as data volumes are not huge - but testing on a network (2 separate ones) the performance is dreadful. Loading one form from another takes upto 10 seconds with just the text box control outlines displayed at first.
The performance also seems to degrade with usage.
I tried increasing the swap file size but no difference. The pc's are varied, from P133's to PIII450's - even the pIII's are slow.
The network seems ok as the FoxPro system works fine. Any ideas?

 

[chiph]

SteveHall -

First off, MS-Access is not really a multi-user database. It works over a network, but not as well as the MSDE (lite version of SQLServer) would.

But if you want to continue to use Access, then there are a few things to look at:

1) Data-bound controls. They get populated when the form is opened, which can make an app appear slow. Use ADO recordsets in code, instead.

2) Query design. Bring only the columns back that you absolutely need. Don't do "SELECT * FROM" unless you truly need all columns.

3) Database/Index design. Make sure you have indexes on the columns that the app queries against. You don't want indexes on all of them (makes inserts and updates slow), but just enough to speed up 80% of the queries.

Hope this helps.
Chip H.

 

[SteveHall]

I don't have data bound controls. I didn't want anything updated until the user clicks 'OK' on the form so everything on the form is updating public memory variables.

There aren't any redundant indexes as ar as I can see.

The exe file is about 6.5mb, and I compiled for native code and optimise for speed.

I'm defining a connection in each form (which I was advised to do by the trainer whose course I attended) - is that a problem?