Discussion Forums

The inital load of RenderUSA (compiled in release mode) takes a very long time to load 45-60 seconds.

If I close the application and re-run it after the initial run, it comes up in about 5 seconds.
I was previously told to download the new Desktop DLL, so now I have the release candidate from November 2nd 2006 (or so) and still have slow initial load time.

We are looking at putting the images on a centeral server and accessing them via the internet. This will further slow us down.

1. Is there a way or can you give guidance on how to manage loading so it can come up faster? I believe 45-60 seconds will be unacceptable to our customer.
2. How does one access the images on an internet server?

Thanks,
Gary.

Gary,

During the initial compile Visual Studio is creating the website and loading all the layers. In later runs, all this is still in the disk cache which greatly decreases “load time“. This same type of process will occur with customer that access you site. The initial load will take awhile, but will substantially decrease with later runs.

We have made some changes that have cut the initial load time down to about 35 seconds. These changes will be available next week with a new build. Please contact support@thinkgeo.com to receive this update.

I am not quite sure how to answer your question about how to access images on an internet server. I assume that you are wanting to show satellite images of your mapping area. To do this you would need to add the images as ImageLayers.

ThinkGeo Support

Thanks for the reply. I will want to get the new DLL.

We would like to ship all maps to customers for installation on each laptop. One thing keeping us from doing this is the size of the data (17 Gig). If we decide to move maps to the internet to save on customer disk space, is there a technique well used to run these maps off a web site? I there a speed issue acros the web? What kind of performance can I expect?

If maps are loaded on the customers PC, it takes them X amount of time (iniail load time - I assume there could be initial load time on the web connection too) to load the app when they start up there laptop (could happen several times a day) . This initial load may be too long. I was thinking you may have delt with this by creating some sort of management tool where perhaps you don't load street data in any states till you know you need to - looking at threshold and state. This could improve initail load time. Do you have something like this devised already? Is it posible.

Thanks!
Gary

Gary,

If you decide to use the Internet to access your maps, the performance will be regulated by the performance of your server and the speed of the connection to that server.

The slower initial load time of RenderUSA will only occur for the very first person to access your website. When the app is first run all the required information (layers, etc.) will be cached on the web server. Thus any further access by other customers will be very fast.

With the laptops the idea is the same. The load times will be restricted to the performance of the machine. Additionally, the first time that the app loads will be slower, but after this it will be faster. Keep in mind that each time the computer is restarted or you use the computer for other tasks the disk cache is emptied or new data is placed in here from other apps, thus you will have to “reload” Render USA into the cache with the slower performance. I would also like to point out that if the data is updated you will have to create x copies of the new data to install on the laptops. With the web server you only update in one place!

We have refined the code so the new build of Web will load faster than the 35 second version that I previously mentioned. Please understand that this load time is highly dependent on your hardware and should not be thought of as an absolute benchmark.

If you need assistance setting up your website, I would recommend contacting our sales department to set up some time with our Professional Services division.

ThinkGeo Support