Leveraging Client Resources

The CML's distributed nature lets it increase scalability and performance by making full use of the computing power on the client computers. This is done in the following ways:

• Early setup of user interface elements, using <DIV> tags. The CML application prepares screen elements enclosed within DIV tags. Because DHTML allows for absolute screen positioning, these DIV selections of screen area can be layered. Then, the CML can quickly change the display by making one layer visible, while making another layer invisible.
• Database access from an ActiveX element on the client. For more information, see RDS in the CML Application. This practice limits repeat requests ("roundtrips") to the server to find the next or previous page of data. With RDS, rows of data are sent in batches to the client, where they are cached, making client-side manipulation (such as sorting) possible. Note: It is recommended that data be filtered at the server to reduce the total number of records sent.