AllTime v4 performance

[bhunch]

Well I just downloaded v4.0 and noticed the code base has grown from 167K with 3.2 to 312K with 4.0 and the performance has plummeted on my Sony Clie PEG-T615C. I am running v4.11S of the Palm Operating system. I have 10MG of free memory on my Clie. It is most noticeable when switching between another task and AllTime and performing certain activities in Alltime. Some example times are:

Startup = 10 seconds
Change configuration = 10 seconds.
Switching views = 8-9 seconds

I was wondering if anyone was aware of this since the performance in version 3.2 is significantly faster; startup = 2 seconds.

Is any one looking into code optimization and performance issues?

bob H.

[mike d]

On my m515, I get the following times:

Startup: 1 second plus the time to display whatever view is set.

View change times:
Time view: 3-5 seconds
Expense view: 1 second
Auto Log view: under 1 second

Also on the program size, don't forget that Report is now part of AllTime, so the actual size change is from 229k to 312k.

mike d

[dmiller]

I am also suprised by the degradation in performance in this new version. I have used versio 3.21 for quite a while and really appreciate its zippyness.

Now it take 25-30 seconds to change a display. Whats with that?

I am using a Palm IIIc with 8MB Ram and OS 3.5.

Is there a fix coming soon. I cannot use the new version as it is, unless I can bill iambic for waiting time.

[bhunch]

I figured out what part of the problem may be. Performance is related to the number of records you have in AllTime. I had history in V3.2 dating back to 12/13/2000. I can't tell you how many there are unless I were to count each one. Perhaps there is a backdoor way to figure that out? When I purged all the records previous to 1/1/2003 in v4.0 the performance improved significantly. I will provide some timings if an engineer is interested.

I don't why the peformance for the same number of records would be so drastically different between v3.2 and v4.0 but it is.

[mike d]

I keep only a few months worth of AllTime data on my Palm. I expect that is why I am seeing faster (correction: less slow) response.

mike d

[james]

Hi,

Correct it is related to the number of records, Bob's database has over 1000 records which is causing this slow down on the older OS4.x and lower devices. This same database on a Tungsten T for example has no noticeable delay.

We are looking into this and hopefully can make some optimizations to reduce this delay when there are a lot of records in the database.

[knirps]

Unfortunately, it seems that in sharing a code base with TR4, AllTime seems to have gotten a little bloated. While I appreciate some of the new features, I'd rather pay the $19.95 upgrade price to see the few incompatibilities between AllTime 3 and Palm OS5 fixed. In it's current form, AllTime 4 is, simply put, a step backwards.

[alltimeuser]

I agree that AllTime4 is a step backwards. These performance issues need to be fixed ASAP.

[jdefgts]

I use AllTime, well, all of the time on my Kyocera 7135 Smartphone. I downloaded and installed version 4.03. The good news is that I did not uninstall version 3.21. The new version requires more than 30 seconds to load. The old version loads instantaneously.

This program is all about the recognition of the value of time. Simply put, my time is too valuable to waste waiting for this program to load and run. Despite the new features, which do appear to be major additions, in my opinion, this product is not currently ready for prime time.

[malldev]

Alltime has got to be the most bloated code that I have seen for the Palm.

No other upgrade that I have loaded has had anywhere near the performance impact. Given the physical realities of the software, I cannot understand why it took so long for an upgrade with such minimal feature set additions and why no one seemed to notice that it took what was a nearly immediate load and view of the previous version and made it a substantial wait for not only the initial screen viewing, but each and every entry.

[malldev]

So what is the latest information on the Alltime 4.xx performance problems?

It has been 2 weeks since it was posted that it was being looked into.

Version 4.xx has become a real performance dog, and given that it took so long to get from the last version of Alltime, Iambic should be doing some real scrambling on this to attempt to regain some crediiblity on this application with its installed user base.

[jdefgts]

I was disappointed to download version 4.04 and find that the performance problems have not been addressed in this newest version.

Whille I like and use version 3.21, I sadly cannot recommend that others purchase the new version until the performance issues are addressed.

[malldev]

Originally posted by MonsterCrash
We are looking into this and hopefully can make some optimizations to reduce this delay when there are a lot of records in the database.

It has been nearly 6 weeks now. What is the status of the bloat removal aka performance optimization to bring back the performance that was in the previous version 3.x?

[james]

Hi,

Sorry for the delay in getting out a faster performing version of AllTime, we are getting close and hope to have it ready in the next couple of days.

[malldev]

I just installed the 4.06 update. A major performance improvement. I think that it loads faster than version 3.x on my Palm Vx now. Thanks.