Recommended options values count for use with server paging and filtering

[Edward]

Am considering use of server side filtering and paging for combobox because expecting large number of dropdown values.

What would be  the recommended number of values count for which the use of server side filering/paging is recommended?  When would one start seeing performance issues with large number of dropdown values?

Thnks.

[Marin Bratanov]

Hello Edward,

The answer to this is highly specific to each project and even case. For example, if the page is already very heavy, adding 500 items to it will cause more issues than adding 500 items to a relatively lightweight form. On the other hand, a powerful machine will be able to handle heavy pages with ease, while a weaker machine can start choking when the DOM reaches only a couple of thousand elements.

With this in mind, I suggest that you:

• Test how the pages you already have behave when you load the data you plan to have (it is relatively easy to simulate any number of items through a simple Enumerable.Range(1, 20000).Select() call) on an average device you expect your users to have. If this works fine, you can keep using this simple approach and only consider serve filtering or virtualization when the pages become slow or you get complaints. Of course, what is acceptable is to be defined in the scope of the particular project.
• If the combo is not going to always be used, or is not one of the first things on the page, use its .AutoBind(false) setting so that it does not request data and put it in the DOM when it initializes, but instead requests data and renders items when opened, or when the user types.
• Consider combining both approaches to delay loading and see how pages behave with that before implementing more complex logic like virtualization.

 

Regards,
Marin Bratanov
Progress Telerik