Infragistics UltraWebGrid offers rich client-side programming model, but often it can be extremally slow. As an example consider a simple task: Given a particular Row ID hide the rest of the grid rows, keeping only this row visible.

Using UltraWebGrid’s CSOM (Client Side Object Model) JavaScript code looks like this:

var oGrid = igtbl_getGridById('xMyGrid');    // Get reference to grid object

for (var sRowID in oGrid.Rows) {   // Looping thru all rows in grid's rows collection

   if (sRowID != sSelectedRowID) {   // If current row ID is not given ID
      igtbl_getRowById(sRowID).setHidden(true) // Get reference to row and hide it
   }

}

The code works – it really does. But to loop thru 50 rows in this manner can take 10-15 seconds, not something your user will be happy about when instant action is expected.

Now let’s revise the above code a little:

var oTable = igtbl_getGridById('xMyGrid').Element;   // Get reference to grid's TABLE

for (var I = 0; I < oTable.rows.length; I++) { // Looping thru all rows in HTML Table
   
   if (oTable.rows[I].id != sSelectedRowID) { // If current row ID is not given ID
      oTable.rows[I].style.display = 'none' // hide HTML Table row
   }

}

Because the second code block doesn’t have to jump thru hoops of Infragistics JS library (direct row reference instead of loaded igtbl_getRowById, simple CSS instead of setHidden) it only takes fraction of a second to execute.

This example shows, that using Document Object Model instead of Infragistics Object Model can give you a tremendous performance boost. This replacement is not always possible, but when it is – the effect is amazing.