Speed of dynamic control creation

[willisgt]

I've run into a major problem. I've got a program which, on a given form, creates a number of controls dynamically. The program queries an SQLite table and pulls certain records to determine which controls need to be created. The query works fine, and very quickly.

Okay. So I run through all the records returned by the query and start creating controls. For each record, there's one button and two labels. I also add an event to handle the 'click' event from the button.

In all, I'm creating 28 groups of controls, for a total of 84 controls - and it *takes forever* to complete. Five seconds may not sound like a long time, but for this application, it's just totally unacceptable.

So without hard-coding the controls, is there a way to speed this process up? I've shaved a little time off the process, but it's not nearly enough.

The part of the formVisitCat_Show subroutine that does the work (and takes so long) follows:

	Do While reader.ReadNextRow = True

		myCat = reader.GetValue(0)
	
		temp = "BUTTONC" & myCat
		AddButton( "formVisitCat", temp,   1,  i,  19, 15, "*" )	' "(S)"
		Control( temp ).Color = colorPrefs.GetPixel1( 20, kColorPrefsStandardButton )
		Control( temp ).FontColor = colorPrefs.GetPixel1( 20, kColorPrefsStandardButtonFont )
		Control( temp ).FontSize = 7
		Control( temp ).BringToFront

		If AddEventManager( temp, "Click", "startQuestions") = 0 Then
	 		AddEvent( temp, Click, "startQuestions")
		End If

		temp = "CATC" & myCat
		AddLabel( "formVisitCat", temp,  20, i, 210, 15, myCat)
		Control( temp ).Color = colorPrefs.GetPixel1( 20, kColorPrefsRadioAndCheckbox )
		Control( temp ).FontColor = colorPrefs.GetPixel1( 20, kColorPrefsRadioAndCheckboxFont )

		temp = "STATC" & myCat
		AddLabel( "formVisitCat", temp, 230, i,  90, 15, "Pending")
		Control( temp ).Color = colorPrefs.GetPixel1( 20, kColorPrefsRadioAndCheckbox )
		Control( temp ).FontColor = = colorPrefs.GetPixel1( 20, kColorPrefsRadioAndCheckboxFont )

		gCategoryList = gCategoryList & myCat & ","
						
		i = i + 15
		
		'SET THE STATUS FOR EACH CATEGORY
		gQuestionCount = 0
		gQuestionList = ""
	
		gQuestionCount 		= reader.GetValue(1)
		iHowManyAnswered 	= reader.GetValue(2)
	
		'GET THE NUMBER OF ANSWERS FOR THIS CATEGORY
		If gSetCategoryFlag <> true Then Return

		' set the value of the 'status' field. update visit status if required.

		If iHowManyAnswered = 0 Then
			Control( "STATC" & myCat ).Text = "Pending"
		End If
		
		If iHowManyAnswered > 0 Then
			Control( "STATC" & myCat ).Text = "" & iHowManyAnswered & " of " & gQuestionCount
		End If

		If iHowManyAnswered = gQuestionCount Then
		 	Control( "STATC" & myCat ).Text = "Complete"
		End If
		
		If gQuestionCount = 0 Then
	 		Control( "STATC" & myCat ).Text = "Optional"
		End If
		
	Loop

I know someone will ask - AddEventManager checks to see if a given event has already been added to a control with a specific name. Returns 1 or 0.

BTW, this takes about 5 seconds on an AT&T (HTC) 8125 running a 400mhz Samsung CPU. It takes about 0.1 seconds on my desktop running a 2.5 ghz AMD.

The device is running WM5 w/.Net 2.0. (This wouldn't have anything to do with which service packs of .Net I've got installed, would it?)

It's time for this application to launch and I've got to get over this performance issue - so any help at all, as always, is greatly appreciated.

Gary

[Erel]

You should use If...Else If...Else If instead of:

If iHowManyAnswered = 0 Then
			Control( "STATC" & myCat ).Text = "Pending"
		End If
		
		If iHowManyAnswered > 0 Then
			Control( "STATC" & myCat ).Text = "" & iHowManyAnswered & " of " & gQuestionCount
		End If

		If iHowManyAnswered = gQuestionCount Then
		 	Control( "STATC" & myCat ).Text = "Complete"
		End If
		
		If gQuestionCount = 0 Then
	 		Control( "STATC" & myCat ).Text = "Optional"
		End If

GetPixel is a costly method.
You should call it before the loop and save the results in a variable.

[RandomCoder]

Have you considered hard coding the controls but setting the visible property to false, then when you run through your query you just show the controls that are required.
This should be a lot faster than adding each control dynamically.

Regards,
RandomCoder.

[willisgt]

I have considered doing just that; that approach would impose a limit as to how many options the user has, and so I'm trying to avoid it. But yes, it may come to that.

I woke up this morning about 4 AM and realized that the problem is probably due to the fact that for every control I create dynamically, the program has to allocate a block of memory. That gets expensive when it's done 80 times in a row.

Is there a way to just allocate a block of memory for the program's use, similar to calloc() or malloc() in C? Or would that do any good in this case?

[agraham]

Originally Posted by willisgt

Is there a way to just allocate a block of memory for the program's use, similar to calloc() or malloc() in C? Or would that do any good in this case?

You can't - at least not in B4PPC native code - but that's not your problem. It is just that B4PPC is not a high performance environment. Nothing is free and the trade off for the ease of use and weak typing is a loss of performance compared to raw code. Erel indicates that the next version will hopefully perform an order of magnitude better which if fully realised on your code would bring the delay down to a (probably) acceptable 500mS or so. Drop him a PM and ask to be put on the beta tester list ( like me ! ) if it is not full already.

Update about Basic4ppc V6.0