My Dictionary Editor has become so slow it is almost rendered useless.
It seems to be somewhat related to size of dictionary, but even with very small dictionaries, it is way too slow.
Clicking on a table: First click; 13 seconds from selection to display 4 properties. Next click, another table; 3 seconds.
Clicking on a column: First click; 10-20 seconds for refresh. Next click;
Add column: 20-30 seconds for open dialog, 20-30 seconds for each subsequent add.
I am using a 34" screen. 32GB RAM. Clarion uses a mer 270MB. When running with Clarion in full screen, I can sometimes see that the IDE changes size before restoring. Tried to change resolution, didn’t do any good. Tried to set windows to prioritize performance over power, no change.
Any suggestions on where to look?
Not sure if it is relevant. Dictionary is 4MB large.
Clarion dictionary dct file is actually a database so there may be a lot of bloat if you update it many times.
Try exporting it to text ( dctx file ) , creating a new dictionary file on the side and importing it back. This always reduces the size of my app and dct files and I tend to do it occasionally.
When I have the same problem with a 133KB dictionary, that suggest other problems, I think.
Tried it though, only difference is 80kb size, unfortunately no changes in behavior.
I noticed that when creating a new dictionary, Clarion defaulted to Windows/System32 directory. I think that is weird.
It does that for me too when the last accessed folder in the pick list does not exist, eg. I remove a test solution created for testing some code or template before applying it to the main app.
Do you have any other machine with Clarion installed? If so you can try to open your dictionary there to see if it’s still slow. However since your dct exported and reimported correctly it’s rather the problem with you Windows or Clarion installation.
Very often system slowness is also caused by broken symlinks pointing to non-existent files. Do you have anything listed on your start page that is not existent? Do you have “Remove missing recants from the list” ticked there?
Also check for any broken Shortcut (.lnk) files in you start menu, desktop and in your solution folder. These can cause delays as the system waits for timeout before it stops searching for the target file. If there are many it may take a considerable amount of time. Have you recently removed some folders from your clarion installation that may be referenced to in your redirection file? I would look for anything that used to be there and is now missing. Any network drives that are no longer there?
You can try using registry cleaner software to clean up your system. There is plenty I used Auslogistics Registry Cleaner and their Registry Defrag to speed up my Windows
Another thing that can be slowing things down is antivirus. Even if you still use the same one these are constantly updated and new scanning algorithms can cause various disruptions. See CrowdStrike last year.
Anti Virus it is.
I have a second computer (2019) that I use when travelling.
I rarely do dictonary work on it. Tested editing dictionary, it worked fine.
Turned off Anti Virus on stationary (2022) and that too worked fine.
I have mirrored the working area using Dropbox , with My Documents inside Dropbox, so the file structure is identical.
However, one the old laptop I have setup serveral exclusions for folders, particularily My Documents, which I do not have on my stationary computer.
I will prepare the same exclusions and I owe you all a big thank you, yet again.
Edit: Folder exclusions was not enough. On this computer I had to exclude Clarion.exe
Thanks. This helps when moving in the list of tables. When moving in the list of fields, large time delays remain. When switching from Clarion6 to Clarion11, I removed all “derived from” from the dictionary in the Clarion6 environment.
No idea, then. I have DCTs with over 900 files and hundreds of fields (I literally had to change templates so Clarion could handle that much), and the field-to-field navigation is sub-second.
Obvious question: Did you try the same DCT in other machine?
The problem with derived was a few years ago, when I was switching from IDE Clarion6 to IDE Clarion11. The delays after converting the dictionary were similar to what the author of the topic described. The documentation states that the Clarion11 environment automatically synchronizes inherited fields in the dictionary, unlike the Clarion6 environment. In Clarion6, I actively used inheritance from pool and left the derived from field populated. After that, I cleared all the derived from fields in the Clarion6 environment and reconverted the dictionary in Clarion11. The slow performance issue has been resolved. I am still using inheritance from pool, but I am clearing derived from after application. I do not remember if I have tried to reproduce the issue on different computers, but it is unlikely to have an impact. The dictionary contains 287 tables, 1450 keys, and 5209 fields.
