Addenda: The Counter Mechanism

Introduction

This information is provided in near real time, but changes made to the data in the database by other users or server side processing might cause the count to deviate from the actual number of records. This approach minimizes the performance impact on the server when dealing with multiple users.

Triggers

The counting function only operates at user initiated instances as continuous real-time information would consume too much resource on the server. The counting function is thus triggered by certain events.

By accessing the top-level folder, the counter will retrieve information for all inventories belonging to this folder. Inventories for which the count has not yet been retrieved show empty parenthesis () until their count has been retrieved. The counter retrieves data for the top most inventory items first and then works its’ way down to the bottom of the list.

A recount for all items belonging to a top level folder can be manually triggered by clicking the refresh button (next to the ‘Menu’ label).

When selecting an inventory from the top-level folder, a recount for this inventory is triggered in order to provide the latest possible information.

When modifying (adding/deleting) records in an inventory, the counter is updated to reflect the actual number of records for that inventory.

When changing the selected Data Owner in the top right, the, the counter is updated to reflect the number of records which comply to that selection.

Multi-Entity Adaptation

The counting mechanism takes into account the data owners to which the user has access in case multi-entity has been provided. This means that the counted records for the inventory will reflect those records to which the user has access in compliance with the data owner he has selected.

When data owner membership has been changed in user administration, the result of this change will only be visible after restarting AvantGard Trax on the client side. This applies to both the counter and the data owner filtering ability.

Performance

The performance of this feature is influenced by a number of factors and careful setup is necessary in order to minimize the amount of system resources necessary for fluent functioning.

Proper setup of the inventory items for which the counting function is desired. As more counters require more resources from the server, counters should only be configured for those inventories for which they serve actual purpose.

The database server capabilities determine the response time of the counter. A more powerful database server will have to dedicate a smaller percentage of its’ resources to the counter.

The number of concurrent users has an effect on the resources which the server must assign to the counter functionality. The more users who access the inventory with a counter set up, the higher the load on the server will be.