David,
> In 3.5 the performance of this improved quite a bit, if I recall correctly,
> due to optimizations in the Data Manager. Doing fewer, larger records will
> still help, due to the per-record HotSync time overhead. I don't recall if
> there are further improvements in 4.0 or not.
I just tried again with Palm OS 4.0 and this would seem to have sped it up
somewhat. My database is currently 1.4MB, 8000 records and HotSync to my Vx
running OS 4.0 (attached to a Mac with PalmConnect) took 14 minutes. (This
is with Palm Desktop 2.6 ... I couldn't get Mac Desktop 4.0b1 to work.) The
final database will be about 2MB, 10,000 records. It will be interesting to
see what the time is with a native USB transfer to the new devices. I think
it unreasonable to have a user wait more than 5 minutes for a transfer,
irrespective of the amount (and layout) of data being transferred.
> And for that matter, just about everything should work faster with fewer,
> larger objects. They're all indexed, after all, and invidually resizable
> and moveable etc., which results in overhead. Packing stuff together
> usually is helpful for transportation, which is why suitcases were invented
> :-) But you don't keep your clothes in a suitcase at home; you invest in a
> set of drawers since they have better access time which outweighs their
> larger size!
Half the records in my database are data records of variable size (some
quite large but always less than 64KB), the other half are index records,
also of variable size. Sure I can pack these into 64KB chunks and create a
super-index but why should I have to bother when the only issue is HotSync
time. The current layout of the database logically maps to the data itself.
An alternative is to put the data on SD cards and mail them out every two
months but my client is unwilling to create a distribution channel when the
data can be made available for ready download from the 'net.
Stephen Best
Bitware Australia
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