limit on number of items

ssattath
Is there a limit on the number of items that Zotero can retain.
  • Tjowens
    There is no set limit to the number of items you can have in Zotero. That said, the program will start to move a bit slower when you get into tens of thousands of records.
  • ssattath
    thanks,

    I run under Windows and wonder whether I will be able to use it with 5,000-10,000 entries. More specifically:
    a. Is the product planned to reasonably function with such volume and?
    b. Is there a record of successful usage (e.g. in stress testing) with such volume?
    c. Are you aware of at least a handful of users with ~10K entries (under Windows)?

    In any case, it is a great product
  • Tjowens
    1. Yes, It is planed for Zotero to function with such volume.
    2. Yes, Our devs use collections with around 10,000 items in them for testing.
    3. Yes, There are at least a handful of users we know of with collections of that size.
  • erazlogo
    Zotero works fine with my collection of 28,000+ items.
  • breckenr
    I'm using Zotero with a collection of about 9000 items. In general I think that it works (it has functionality) much, much better than Endnote. The relational tools (tags, folders, attachments, related items) allow for a much more systematic and calm (for lack of a better word) bibliography. But some things are very slow indeed.

    Speeding up Zotero is the area that I think the developers should focus on now.

    Deleting and changing tags takes 35 seconds
    Changing text inside existing long note fields takes up to two minutes
    Changing name fields from double to single entries can take a full minute

    Overall, however, Zotero is simply magnificently better than anything else that I've used -- so I'll upgrade my hardware if that's necessary.
  • sean
    breckenr: What kind of hardware are you running?
  • dstillman
    edited August 4, 2008
    breckenr: Zotero 1.5 should be much faster when it comes out. In the meantime, I'd suggest keeping the tag selector closed when you're not using it by clicking the button to the left of the Actions menu—that should speed things up considerably. Working within collections instead of the full library should also help.

    Finally, if you haven't yet, upgrading to Firefox 3 should also help a bit.
  • erazlogo
    breckenr: In addition to keeping tag selector closed, I keep two collections on the top of my collections list (The "00" in the beginning is to make sure they come up first):

    "00 enter notes," where I put items temporarily to enter notes;
    "00 current," which I choose when entering new items manually and importing them from the web; it would also make sense to put cited items here if you're using the Word plugin

    If you always keep only 5-10 items in each collection the entering process is much faster. Entering a note in its own window also seems faster.
  • breckenr
    sean: I'm running XP on an HP DX2000 with a single P4 3Ghz and 1Gb of Ram.

    Dan: I'm using 1.5 preview (trunk, blush) at the moment on Firefox 3 (and it is much better than 1.07) but still slow on many things.

    erazlogo: I have begun to create working folders with fewer records in them, something that Zotero does very well.
  • dstillman
    Dan: I'm using 1.5 preview (trunk, blush) at the moment on Firefox 3 (and it is much better than 1.07) but still slow on many things.
    The 1.5 Sync Preview contains some optimizations, but there are still many to be made before 1.5 is released, and there are likely also performance regressions since 1.0.* for certain operations.

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