Client memory issues with Forms Server

[Steve]

Hi,

We have a fairly complex form with 4 or 5 rich text fields and around 12
external data connections populating the various drop downs. It's being
hosted on a SharePoint site with Forms Server.

Users are complaining that the site gets slower and slower as they edit and
save the forms. What we've noticed is the IEXPLORE.EXE on the client machine
can sometimes reach 150 - 200Mb (30-50 is normal). It seems to expand by
10Mb or so every couple of loads/saves.

How does the form (and our coding) impact the client memory usage? Is there
something we could be doing or not doing that's causing the memory to expand
that much?

Thanks.

 

[S.Y.M. Wong-A-Ton]

The speed at which web pages load depends on the size of the pages being
loaded. How does the page grow between subsequent saves? In IE, go to View >
Source, save the source of the page as a text file, and check the size on
disk. Does the text file grow between saves? How many things are you storing
in the main data source of the form? The Rich Text fields might be causing
the issue depending on how much text and other formatting the users are
putting in them. You can also try tweaking IE's cache to see if that helps.
And have you already seen this article?
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb380251.aspx

 

[Steve]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply and sorry for taking 2 weeks to follow up.

I did as you suggested and saved the source as I opened the forms. The
result is consistent in that it doesn't seem to change. The size is between
92 and 104 KB for the 8 records I opened. During the test I opened around 12
records and the client memory went from 40MB to 107MB. It did recycle around
90MB but it climbed back up after another couple of forms were opened.

I did read the article you referenced, but nothing stands out as the
culprit. The form does have some code behind that sorts and filters the data
returned from the data connections, but I would assume that is all done on
the server.

We still don't know why the memory is increasing so rapidly...

 

[BobCh]

Is this the full IP client, or a Forms Services form? We had some
complex forms that were very slow and migrated them to web forms,
limited the retrieves for lists, and limited code and the performance
has improved greatly.

Forms services is a big investment, but if available, you may want to
look there.

 

[BobCh]

Steve, Sorry about my response. Not too useful.
Anyway. What version of IE are your users on?

 

[Steve]

Hi,

All end users are running IE 6 but we've tested using IE 7 and the results
are the same.

Other InfoPath forms we've developed don't seem to have the same problem.
The main difference seems to be that the form that causes IE memory to grow
has 5 rich text fields. It also does some filtering for drop down fields,
but I think that's all done on the server.

I guess an easy test for me would be to remove all the rich text fields from
the form but leave the data unchanged and see what happens. I'll try that...