Forms Expert - Using Form Caching
Previous issues of CRMtimes have discussed many of the
benefits of the new forms architecture in CommenceRM 3.0 including:
Commence have introduced "form caching" to
manage the performance when opening a form containing all these new
features. The process of caching builds a "fast load" copy
of the form, which is then held in memory or copied to disk when you
exit Commence (depending on the caching configuration discussed
below). Of course if the form is modified, the "fast load"
copy then needs to be updated.
Since the user is opening up and closing detail forms
all day long, this process of caching makes a big difference to
performance. Depending
on your hard disk speed and and memory size/type, getting the form
from the cache can easily be 10+ times faster than building the form
from the definition file.
Most of the time this goes on in the background and you
don't even know it exists. However if you have been
modifying any forms you might have come across something odd, if you
make changes to a form and then
save it, and re-open it, you won't see any of the changes you have
made!!! This is because
Commence is displaying the copy of the form from the cache, rather
than the file you just modified.
Configuring cache behaviour
The good news is
that you can manually configure the behaviour of the cache. The
form
caching configuration information is stored in [OtherOptions] section
of <databasepath>\data.ini file.
As always, before modifying any settings we recommend
making a backup of your database and the data.ini file first.
There
are three parameters which control the cache behaviour: FormCachePolicy,
FormCacheSize and FormCache.
FormCachePolicy
0
- Do not cache any forms. Use this option when customising your
forms and testing.
1
- Cache forms for the current session only. i.e. do not pre-load any forms
or write the FormCache settings into the data.ini file.
2
- Auto cache forms across sessions. i.e. read the FormCacheSize and FormCache
settings from the data.ini file and pre-load the forms. Also, write
the FormCache settings when
leaving the database. Use this setting for normal operations and best
performance. [default]
Regardless
of FormCachePolicy, changes to detail forms still sync to other
clients and will be displayed correctly.
Regardless
of FormCachePolicy, changes to detail forms still sync to other
clients and will be displayed correctly.
FormCacheSize
- This
determines the max number of forms that can be cached, up to a maximum of 100
- 5
is used as default if no FormCacheSize is set.
- This
entry is ignored if FormCachePolicy = 0 (ie set to not cache
any forms).
FormCache
- This
setting is just a string
of the form file names separated by semicolons ';'
- This
property is read and written if and only if FormCachePolicy
= 2.
- This
value should
not be be modified since it is automatically
written by Commence.
- If
FormCache contains 10 file names and FormCacheSize = 5, then
only first 5 forms will be pre-loaded.
Note that if
entries for FormCachePolicy and FormCacheSize are not present in
Data.ini file, the default values get used. The
default values do not get written to the Data.ini file.
Examples
Sample
DATA.INI settings
- Everyday use:
In general you want Commence to be caching the forms, so your
settings will be as follows (FormCache will be different for your
database):
[OtherOptions]
FormCachePolicy=2
FormCacheSize=10
FormCache=FM001000.XML;FM001300.XML;FM000500.XML;
Sample
DATA.INI settings - While customising and testing:
When you are customising forms, you want to disable caching, so use
the following settings:
[OtherOptions]
FormCachePolicy=0
FormCacheSize=0
FormCache=FM001000.XML;FM001300.XML;FM000500.XML;
So by changing a few configuration settings, you can
quickly go from normal mode to customising mode and back again, as you
need. Don't
forget to turn the caching on again, once you have finished customising your
forms though.
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