Slow AJAX loading on Register Event Participants page - VIDEO

[CiviTeacher.com]

Hi there.  I'd like to raise 2issues about the usability and load times of the Register Event Participants page.  I think #1 is best classified as a bug that might be fixable.  #2 is a workflow thing and enhancement.

1. The form is difficult to use because AJAX is so slow to load the data
2. The form allows entering in all transactions with registration except Credit Card, which will not run a live CC transaction on this page

What are your thoughts on #1, is there a solution?

Here is a video I made.  It illustrates the issues.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vbm7ckzadRI

[Donald Lobo]

hey stoob:

ok, the site does seem way slow since drupal.demo is not THAT slow, i'd suspect some slow queries on civicrm's end which get exposed with that DB.

did u try running locally to see if it was as slow on your local machine? i'm also assuming you have the compression and cache expiry etc and other performance optimizations (js/css aggregration) turned on

yes, we do need an indicator that something is loading in the background. In 3.2 we allow folks to send in an eventID which loads things upfront, which is hopefully a wee bit better

lobo

[CiviTeacher.com]

Thanks.

I have all the drupal "performance" things turned on: js/css aggregation, cache, etc

I tried running it on a different server and it was just as slow, maybe slower.

My assumption here is that the client has a lot of data (8,000+ contacts, 15,000+ contributions, several dozen events, etc. - way more than on the demo site) so the result is that AJAX working well on the demo site doesn't work as well with a site that has a lot of data.  I've noticed CiviCRM+AJAX lag before.  The more data in a db, the worse the AJAX lag.

I will try to tune my MySQL database with a script and hope that improves performance, but I do think that CiviCRM queries on this page are still the main issue.

[Donald Lobo]

do u think we can get a copy of the DB to check things out

we are pretty slammed for the next week or two, so will probably not get to investigating it till the first public alphas  are out

in general we do need help from the community to help optimize various aspects of civicrm. generating a mysql slow query log and figuring out places where are are inefficient would be a good start

lobo

[kmarkley]

Just wanted to chime (2 months late) and say that we have the same problem (perhaps not QUITE as slow, but frustrating nevertheless).

I raised both these issues and others in a rant on the forum a while back:
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,13226.msg56695.htm

Regarding live credit card transactions, I have 2 further notes:

1. You can bring up the Register Events Participants page WITH live CC processing by adding "&mode=live" to the URL.  It is still a little awkward b/c you have to know the payment type at the beginning of the process, but at least it doesn't take 2 steps.  I have added "Register-CC" and "Register-Other" items to the navigation menu so that users can get to both forms easily.

2. Despite my disappearance for the last few months, we are still hoping to sponsor a few of the workflow enhancements I identified and this one is at the top of the list.

Lastly, thanks to the core team for the 3.2 enhancements that a) allow one to pass the event ID to the form and b) set the status to a default value.

[CiviTeacher.com]

Now that 3.2 is released maybe the team has time to look at this lagging query on the Event Registration page as discussed here:
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,13933.0.html

As you suggested, I have turned on logging.  I have a small log portion that contains the exact moments when I accessed the Register Event Participants feature and experienced the extreme lag time of the select boxes as illustrated in the video.  I have also have the database itself.  Part of the problem in this slow query (IMHO) is likely the significantly larger amount of data in this working website database, compared to the relatively much smaller amount of data in the demo CiviCRM.  However, it should be noted that amount of events in this working production website is not unreasonable, and is only a few dozen events.

Tell me who to email the files to and I'll send right away.

[Donald Lobo]

can you please email the upgraded 3.2 database to yashodha: yashodha.chaku at webaccess dot co dot in

we'll take a look and try to see how many bad queries they are that can and should be optimized :0

thanx

lobo

[CiviTeacher.com]

When they upgrade yes I will. Probably at 3.2.1

[Simon147]

Actually, I noted the same effect (where slow loading of ajax form) in the registration form (integrated in Drupal). Having less than 30 contacts in my database (and no events), I don't think that this is linked to the amount of data in your database.

You can also check the slowness of that form on http://drupal.demo.civicrm.org/user/register where it takes about 5 seconds for the CiviCRM part of the form to load. On my own website, hosted on a VPS, it takes just about three times as long. Would be great if that could be improved.