Tuning Forms

You can use Identity Manager forms to define interfaces to interact with views or variable contexts in an executing task. Forms also provide an execution context for business and transformation logic on a set of data elements. Although you can create very powerful, dynamic forms that perform a variety of tasks, reducing the complexity of forms increases efficiency.

The following sections describe some methods for improving the performance of your customized forms:

• Optimizing New Forms

• Optimizing Administrator Forms

• Optimizing End-User Forms

• Optimizing Expressions in Form Fields

Optimizing New Forms

When designing new Identity Manager forms, system integrators can optimize a form’s performance by doing the following:

• Performing “expensive” queries only one time, wherever possible. To minimize these queries,

  • Use <Field> <Default> elements to execute and store query results.

  • Use field names to reference values in later fields.

  • For custom tasks

    • Calculate the value in the task before a ManualAction, then store that value in a task variable.

    • Use variables.tmpVar to reference variables in the form.

    • Use <setvar name=’tempVar’/> to clear the variable after a ManualAction.

• Using <defvar> for calculations that are performed for the initial display and with each refresh.

Optimizing Administrator Forms

To improve the performance of administrator forms, do the following:

• Specify TargetResources that only fetch specific resources for editing. (See Tuning Workflows for more information.)

• Use cacheList and cacheTimeout caching parameters for objects that change infrequently if you are working with FormUtil.getResourceObjects or FormUtil.listResourceObjects.

• Store the results of time-consuming calculations and fetches in <Field> elements and evaluate in the <Default> expression to help ensure that an operation occurs only one time.

• Use update.constraints to limit which resources are fetched at runtime (see Dynamic Tabbed User Form in Sun Identity Manager Deployment Reference).

• Use background approval (ManualAction with different owners and one-second timeouts) for faster page submissions.

• Be aware that Identity Manager refreshes all fields defined on all panels of a Tab Panel Form when the page reloads, regardless of which panel is selected.

Optimizing End-User Forms

To improve the performance of end-user forms, do the following:

• Use TargetResources to limit view checkouts to just those resource accounts of interest, which reduces fetch time for view and the memory consumed by TaskInstance and WorkItems.

• Consider using Session.getObject(Type, name) to return a WSUser if just the view properties and attributes of the Identity Manager user object are of interest (useful for managing multiple deferred task triggers).

• Be aware that end-user tasks typically have more WorkItems than Provisioning tasks, so end user tasks are especially susceptible to WorkItem size.

• Consider using temporary generic objects for “view” editing that is constructed on view check-out then merged back into a full view for check-in.

• Consider using scalable forms instead of the default Create and Edit User interfaces.

  When you use the default User forms to edit a user, Identity Manager fetches the resources owned by that user the moment you start editing the user’s account. In deployment environments where users have accounts on many resources, this potentially time-intensive operation can result in performance degradation.

Optimizing Expressions in Form Fields

Some activities performed in forms call resources that are external to Identity Manager. Accessing these resources can affect Identity Manager performance, especially if the results contain long lists of values, such as compiling a list of groups or email distribution lists.

To improve performance during these calls, follow the guidelines in “Using a Java Class to Obtain Field Data” in Sun Identity Manager Deployment Reference.

Also, avoid using JavaScript^TM in performance-critical expressions such as <Disable> expressions. Short XPRESS expressions are easier to debug if you use the built-in tracing facilities. Use JavaScript for complex logic in workflow actions.

If a form is slow to display, you can use the debug/Show_Timings.jsp page to determine the problem. Look for calls to Formconvert.convertField(). This method shows how long each field took to compute its value.