When compared to most defect management systems available, the OnTime 2005 performance, especially when it comes to searching and filtering, is unmatched.  But even though OnTime is faster than most competing products, as the size of your database grows beyond 4 or 5 thousand items, performance can seem a bit sluggish.  This blog entry will help you get the most out of OnTime 2005 when it comes to performance for larger installations.

The #1 tip for improving the overall performance of your OnTime installation is to first make sure you are running OnTime V5.1 or higher.  V5.1 introduced a number of performance related features and the development team paid special attention to improving the efficiency of various parts of the system.  Without doing any of the tips mentioned below, going with OnTime V5.1 (vs. 5.0 or 4.X) can improve performance by as much as 50%.

Now, assuming you're running V5.1 or higher, here are some additional tips to help improve performance:

For Either OnTime 2005 Windows, Web or VS.NET Clients

• Tip #1: Select a Project other than “All Projects” on the Project Tree - OnTime uses a smart caching technique when pulling data from the database.  When you select a project on the project tree, OnTime only pulls down the data for that project and all of its child projects.  So when you select “All Project”, every single non-archived defect, feature or task is being pulled down from the database.  In the Windows Edition, it caches this data on the client side so it no longer needs to request the same information.  As you click on each project, the client-side cache grows and therefore, performance continues to improve.  So by selecting just the project that you work in most frequently, you should notice a significant performance improvement.
• Tip #2: Use the New Archive Feature to Archive Old Items - OnTime V5.1 introduced a new archiving feature that allows you to easily archive older items that are no longer needed.  Items which are closed, belong to a project that no longer exists or items that are no longer relavent can easily be archived.  Best of all, you still have easy access to archived items (using the defect/feature/task menus), but by default, archived items will not be pulled down from the database.  You can easily archive items by creating a simple archive filter and using the new archiving feature, select your new filter during the archive.
• Tip #3: If Formatting is Never Used in Detail Fields, Use Text-Based Details - By default, OnTime allows for HTML-based formatting of all the detail fields.  With the introduction of OnTime V5.1, we now allow detail fields to be either Text or HTML.  If your team does not use any HTML formatting, you might consider changing all detailed fields to the “Text” format.  This will especially improve performance on web clients as the text-box control has significantly less overhead than the HTML-based control.

Tips Specific to OnTime 2005 Web Server

• Tip # 4: Turn off the Actions Column if You Don't Use it - Many users of the OnTime system rarely (if ever) use the actions available in the Actions column of the OnTime Web client.  Each user can now select to remove the Actions column from the “Tools -> User Options” menu.  Removing the Actions column helps page preparation time and reduces the HTML payload significantly improving the overall performance of OnTime Web Edition.
• Tip #5: Turn off Multi-Edit Menu if not Used - If you don't use the Multi-Edit menu, this is another feature that can be turned off.  The Multi-Edit menu creates a substantial amount of HTML code that increases the payload size of the page.  If you don't use this feature, remove the menu from the “Tools -> User Options” menu.

Hopefully these tips will help you in getting the most out of your OnTime installation.