Are fields needed if hidden?

HCL Domino Domino Forum
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Hi,I have about 200 hidden fields in my form.

these fields will increase form size and load time of the document in notes client.

What if i remove all these fields? and i work on the notesitem in the backend.

Any idea? they are all of type text.

thx.

sam.

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Subject: are fields needed if hidden?

Removing the field from the form does not remove the data from the Note, so the document size will not change. If you are sure that the none of these fields are required for any UI you could try placing all of the hidden fields on a subform and then either load it or not depending on what you are doing. This might improve load time and 200 hidden fields seems a bit excessive, but without understanding how your data is processed I can’t make any further comment from that perspective.Of course when you create the data with the back-end agent you will create the place holder for the information, and you will need to control the data types.

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Subject: RE: are fields needed if hidden?

Hi,yes, the document size will not change but the form size will.

I have tried the following: remove the fields from the form (they are in 3 subforms) and the document opened in less than 6 seconds from the time the fields where there. No network activity only CPU activity during the 6 seconds.

thx.

sam.

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Subject: RE: are fields needed if hidden?

Do the hidden fields have a lot of Computed fields, or Computed on Compose. Because if there is no network traffic only processor then there are a lot of calculations going on. I know that a computed Subform takes slightly longer to load than an inserted subform, but I still prefer the computed subform.

If the hidden fields are only used by the backend then simply remove them. The Back-end will only look at the Data Type of the data anyway. I use fields that never appear on a form for back-end processing and are created and manipulated exclusively in the back end. Typically hidden fields are used a place holders for the UI side of things anyway.

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Subject: RE: are fields needed if hidden?

Hi,the fields are computed when composed, which should not take time because the document is already composed.

I have removed the fields (they are all of type text) and there was a huge imrovement in performance.

Weird, there was no network traffic and no computation on the level of the fields, maybe the size of the fields in designer caused this.

thx.