Forms just grow and grow and grow

HCL Domino Domino Forum
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Anyone have an explanation as to why forms bloat in size as their design is worked on and appear to contain non-removable “whatever” in them that makes them be larger than they actually should be?

While looking into how to improve performance of an application over the internet (this is access via the Notes client, not web) I noticed that some of the forms in the particular database were larger than I remembered. I’m not talking about the documents/data in the database, just the forms themselves.

A couple of particularly large ones I started playing with and comparing to versions from years ago. While it is natural for designs to typically get bigger, the issue seemed to be more than that. In fact if, in Designer, I deleted the entire design (every field, action, text, section, EVERYTHING) so that I had a blank form, then saved it, they were still strangely large.

For example: a form that is 397k in size (as shown in Designer), when every design item in it is deleted is still 290k in size. Why? If I copy/paste the design of that form (and move over all the actions and Querysave code, etc) the resulting document, which looks and functions identically, is only 205k in size. Where is the additional 192k hiding in the existing production form?

When working in this particular database and opening documents with the above described form, it takes 1.5-2 seconds to open over a WAN with 75mb/75mb server connection and a 50mb/50mb client connection and 3 hops of a total 15-20ms latency. It should be smoking fast. The data being opened by the form is trivial, say 1.5k. The form is NOT saved with the data in the database. It makes no difference the performance of the client PC.

In a test, if I recreate this form by the copy/paste method and use the new version, it opens in half the time, as you’d expect, because it is half the size.

I’ve got numerous forms with the exact issue, not just the one described.

I also don’t know why the client cache doesn’t seem to help with this. It should, as I understand it, cache the form design and thus make opening it a mere matter of pulling across the 1.5k of data plus a little more. But it is slow from first opening to 50th opening, and all seem to be the same speed. Deleting the cache, not deleting the cache, allowing the cache to be huge - none of that makes a difference.

Is there a way to “compact” the design of a form without recreating it from scratch?

Client and server are 9.0.1FP4

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Subject: I have run into this before…

There are a few factors which may be contributing.
First, rich text – and the body of a form is rich text – tends to get a bit ragged over time as you edit it over and over. Copying and pasting it compacts it.
There are also various extra items stored in the form for V4 compatibility, which can be deleted if you have no more V4 clients (but they come back if you edit the form).
Lastly, $SCRIPTOBJ_xx items can be left over by a bug that failed to remove them in earlier versions (pre 7.0.3). This occured when you change the position within the list of actions, of actions with LotusScript code. The compiled code is stored in a $SCRIPTOBJ item numbered according to the action’s position in the list, but the old copy of the compiled code fails to get deleted.
There’s also extra information stored (unnecessarily) with copies of code from shared actions. Naturally, the copy is not used – the action is referenced instead, in case it’s been modified since the form was last worked on.
I’m interested to know whether the problem you’re seeing is one of those, or something else I haven’t heard of. I have a little tool here to fix some of the aforementioned problems, and I’d like to see whether it achieves a similar size reduction and performance improvement to your technique – and if not, what remaining unnecessary objects are being stored and whether I can think of a way to clean them up automatically.
Would you be willing to send me a copy of your application, with information about which forms are of particular concern? I can post results here.

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Subject: More about form “slack”

Re: Mark Taylor:

Question - If you delete a design elements on the form - for example a field, can you still see a reference to the field on the form? ie - in Designer, click the Properties tab, then Fields.

Do the fields that you deleted show? Either in the list of fields itself, or in the field entitled ‘$Fields’ ?

The fields disappear from the design (at least as far as I can tell). I can delete every item from a form so that it basically looks and appears like a new, blank form - except it is 200k in size instead of 1.7k for an actual new, blank form.

Just for fun I copied/pasted in a dozen actions to a form and saved it (it grew by 25k). The immediately deleted the actions I’d pasted in and saved it. But it didn’t return to the original size (is 10k larger than to start with). Over time, with design changes, I’m assuming this sort of thing has accumulated and grown to matter.

Re: Andre Guirard:

Let me look closer at your post and consider your offer (can’t do it today).

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Subject: design-note-compression …

http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/dx/design-note-compression http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/dx/design-note-compression

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Subject: Interested…

I’m interested in your issue - I’ve had some of the same concerns over time and have run into issues trying to delete elements from a form.

Question - If you delete a design elements on the form - for example a field, can you still see a reference to the field on the form? ie - in Designer, click the Properties tab, then Fields.

Do the fields that you deleted show? Either in the list of fields itself, or in the field entitled ‘$Fields’ ?

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Subject: Already done, years ago

Database is at ODS 52, “Compress database design” and “Compress document data” and “Use LZ1 compression” were enabled long ago (and the proper compact on the db was run to make it functional).

This really isn’t about that anyway. It’s about the fact that if I take an existing, relatively complex form in Domino Designer, totally delete every design element in it, and save it, the resulting empty form is 200x bigger than a new empty form. As this particular form has evolved over time it appears to be holding on to a bunch of dead design elements in it that can’t be seen nor removed – which pump up the size of the form by 100% at this point. Why?

I can get the forms down to a reasonable size by recreating them and copying and pasting the design elements from the current bloated form into a new one, but I don’t want to do that 30-40 times.

Is there some sort of special “compact” command that purges dead, invisible design elements from a form?