Question about speeding up sync times

[Kirk_Masden]

I have a app where data from one table is accessed from several views that have different actions. All of the data in the table must remain available so I cannot reduce sync time by using a security filter. My question is whether one of the following methods of controlling where the actions appear is likely to have a significant impact on the app’s sync time:

1. Using different slices, all with the same range of data, to control which actions are displayed.
2. Avoiding slices and using CONTEXT(“View”) expressions in the “Only if this condition is true” box.

Actually, I’ve already started with the first method and find it fairly easy to work with. A heavy user of my app might have 1000 records by about 20 columns in the main table. Is there likely to be a significant difference in how quickly the app loads or how efficiently it runs with several slices of a table of that size as opposed to no slices and CONTEXT(“View”) expressions for a moderately large number of actions?

Thanks for your consideration.

[Steve]

Slices have the potential to increase sync time because each slice with a filter condition adds an additional examination of every row in the slice table.

I would expect a slice with no filter condition to have virtually no performance impact.

[Steve]

The presence of an action has no inherent effect on performance. Even the performance of an action is not inherently going to affect sync time, as the action is performed independently of a sync. A navigation action, for instance, cannot affect sync time. A data-change action could affect sync time indirectly if the changed data prompts expensive processing at the next sync.

The only (very real) potential I can see an action having on sync time directly is because of the Only if this condition is true expression, which is evaluated once for each row of the table to which the action is attached. In effect, consider the Only if this condition is true expression as another virtual column of the table.

Remember, too, that actions are attached to tables, not slices, so the performance effects are relative to table complexity, not slice complexity.

[Kirk_Masden]

Thank you very much, @Steve. I guess both approaches have some potential performance (sync time) implications. I think I’ll experiment with the two different strategies and see if I can detect a clear difference in my particular case.