Opening Zotero database very slow

I noticed that it every time again takes quit some time for the database to open / show all references. I have only about 4000 references in my database. Without wanting to sound too negative (it's really a great product), this can be quit irritating when writing.

I have the impression that the search-while-you-type feature slows the searching down considerably. That is most noticeable when after you have typed in a word or phrase you delete all but the first letter(s). This will very often results in a long delay before results show up. I am not sure what is causing this and I am actually surprises as I would expect that with the database being a SQLite db, search should be very fast. In fact, I have been using Bibus, which also is based on SQLite and searching is extremely fast.

Working as much as possible in folders with subsets of articles does help to some extent (especially when adding references in a document), but often I have to search the full database. This brings me to one question and one request:

* Most of my files are pdf and I didn't enable the pdf indexing because I fear it will further slow down Zotero. Would that indeed be the case or wouldn't it make much difference in speed?

* Would it be feasible to add the option to disable the search-while-you-type feature, having Zotero only starting to search for a reference when you hit the 'go' button? If so, could that also be incorporated in the Zotero Word / OOo plugin?

Paulo
  • These issues have all been discussed elsewhere on the forums, but some quick answers:
    I noticed that it every time again takes quit some time for the database to open / show all references
    Zotero caches a lot of data at startup in order to improve performance. At least on Macs, it's unusual to ever close Firefox completely, even if there are no browser windows open, but I could see this being more of an issue on Windows/Linux.
    I have the impression that the search-while-you-type feature slows the searching down considerably. ... I am not sure what is causing this and I am actually surprises as I would expect that with the database being a SQLite db, search should be very fast
    Zotero needs to do sorting in JavaScript to be internationally friendly. This may change in Firefox 3 with added support for user-defined functions.
    Most of my files are pdf and I didn't enable the pdf indexing because I fear it will further slow down Zotero. Would that indeed be the case or wouldn't it make much difference in speed?
    It would probably make things slower, since the quicksearch would also need search the fulltext word index.
    Would it be feasible to add the option to disable the search-while-you-type feature, having Zotero only starting to search for a reference when you hit the 'go' button?
    Add a double quotation mark before your search text (and not after, unless you want a phrase search).

    You also might try hiding the tag selector, since it can slow things down quite a bit.

    Hope that helps. We're always working to improve Zotero's performance, and we'll be attempting to make a lot of speed improvements once we've switched over to Firefox 3, so stay tuned.
  • pdf indexing should slow down the importing of individual references slightly, but not the speed of zotero itself. Please someone correct me if I'm wrong.

    Speaking as a user of "legacy hardware" (an ibook g4 on os x) a "disable incremental search - check this if you are using a slow computer " checkbox would be useful. As would a "disable incremental search if currently selected collection is less than item.

    Also is there a standard FAQ for feature requests - bug tracking system?
  • pdf indexing should slow down the importing of individual references slightly, but not the speed of zotero itself. Please someone correct me if I'm wrong.
    Right, it shouldn't affect the speed of general use, just quicksearch and importing. Sorting has a much greater effect on general use.
    Speaking as a user of "legacy hardware" (an ibook g4 on os x) a "disable incremental search - check this if you are using a slow computer " checkbox would be useful.
    OK.
    As would a "disable incremental search if currently selected collection is less than item.
    Not sure what you mean by this.
    Also is there a standard FAQ for feature requests - bug tracking system?
    What's your question? We have a Trac install that the developers use, but we use the forums for feature requests and bug reports.
  • Thanks Dan,

    It's often the little things that help out a lot; adding a double quotation mark before search text works great!

    One question, you mentioned in your reply to Kieren that "Sorting has a much greater effect on general use". What do you mean by this?

    Thanks for the support and of course Zotero
  • One question, you mentioned in your reply to Kieren that "Sorting has a much greater effect on general use". What do you mean by this?
    I mean that sorting the items list is generally what slows Zotero down the most, since it's done when first opening the Zotero pane, when switching collections, when making certain changes to data or performing searches, etc. And, as I mentioned above, it currently has to be done in JavaScript to be internationally friendly, so it's not the speediest operation. I'm confident we can speed this up quite a bit in the future, however.
  • Document insertion is extremely slow on MacOS when full text indexing enabled. I had to delete both PDF tools (deleting one wasn't enough) to get back to the normal speed. I am loosing some very useful features such as metadata fetching though... Isn't there any plan to execute indexing in the background? Does it need to happen at the moment that we add files?

    I have a last generation iMac with a lot of unused CPU power and memory space, and indexing is still slow enough to keep me from working. What about the others who don't?
  • Instead of deleting the PDF tools (and lose the meta-data retrieval) you could also set the number of to-be-indexed pages to 0.
  • I am having similar speed issues, which are making it impossible to use Zotero. I've seen this complaint in several variations on several parts of this forum, and I'm not sure which version applies to me.
    I run Zotero Standalone on Mac and Windows, both relatively up-to-date machines with decent memory. on the Mac I have unbearable lags for everything: searching, adding child items, adding new references...
    On the PC the lag is less for searching, for example, but it's still there.

    I've just tried changing the pdf indexing (still slow), and searching with double quotations (even slower!)

    I would appreciate if there could be a wiki workflow page on troubleshooting slow behavior. Maybe I haven't found it yet, but it's very confusing to try to figure this out with the whole slew of different versions of slowness.
  • wagnerlaru: Start a new thread and provide Debug IDs for relevant actions.
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