Thank you for following up. No, I haven’t talked to GP support yet or asked the forums. I did some searches though, but they have been unsuccessful. Too bad that I only had the issue just after coming back from Convergence… There was plenty of GP support on spot!

We have about 3250 vendors which could make the slowdown appear even worst but you are probably right, the implementation must be very generic and inefficient. I will ask the forums and see… In the meantime I will follow your advice and create custom SmartLists for Extender!

Thank you again,
-Denis
P.S. Your site is very well done and organized, I like it very much. Your contribution to the GP community is also very significant and appreciated by all, including the other MVPs. Thanks for that.

I just did a quick test and I definitely see the slowdown once I add Extender fields to a SmartList. I didn’t time it – with the data in the sample company it was noticeable, but not terribly significant. However, there are only 102 vendors there and I only added a few columns of data. I imagine that this would be more noticeable with more data.

Without any specific knowledge of this, I would guess that because of what has to be done to accomplish adding fields to SmartLists ‘on the fly’ like this, the code has to be very generic and thus inefficient. Similar to coding SELECT * instead of specifying only the fields you need. Again, this is only a guess. I typically prefer to create custom SmartLists for Extender data myself. Even though it’s a bit of a pain to code Extender data, it is usually well worth it in the end for the performance as well as flexibility.

Have you asked about this on any of the Microsoft forums or talked to GP Support? Just curious if anyone else has provided any feedback on this…

-Victoria

I created an Extender window linked to the Vendor Maintenance window. Then I created a Smartlist Integration with the Vendor Smartlist. Everything looks fine, the 2 fields are available in the Smartlist except that it takes forever to retrieve the data, about 2 rows per second…

We ran a SQL Profiler and noticed that, for one returned row (e.g. 1 vendor), the Smartlist makes 84 SQL calls with two Extender fields and “only” 8 without the Extender fields. This explains the poor performance however, I wonder if this is nornal?

Are Smartlists Integrations always that slow? We can use Smartlist Builder to create a new Smartlist and join the SQL view but we would prefer to use the existing one.

Thank you very much for your help,
-Denis

There is a limited list of SmartLists that this is possible for. It may just be that no manufacturing SmartLists are available for this. I would recommend posting your question on the GP Community forum to see if you can get some more feedback on this specific to manufacturing.

-Victoria

So the 77th field changes to “Not Defined”? Seems kind of an arbitrary number. I have not heard of this as a bug, but have you checked with Microsoft on this?

Sorry I cannot offer any more information on this. It may be that this is a limitation and your only option for this would be to use SmartList Builder and create a SQL view with the data you want to show.

-Victoria

I did a test today to see just how many were added before the type changed to “Not Defined”. I was able to add 8 windows with 76 total fields. We are adding them through Extender as both the user guide and your instructions in the post above describe. GP v10 SP4

I have never run into this before, but I can’t say that I routinely add several hundred Extender fields to a SmartList, either. How exactly are you adding them? And in what version/build of GP?

-Victoria

Is there a limit to the number of Extender fields you can add to a SmartList or SmartList Builder Object before the Field Type shows as “Not Defined”? I have used Extender and SLB quite a bit and have tried all the troubleshooting advice from the KB article and your article as well, but it seems that only the first several hundred fields (I will have to count exactly how many) when added to Smartlists work fine no matter which Extender windows they come from and the rest show up as “not defined”. Any thoughts or suggestions?

I have not seen this before, not sure what have caused something like this. Do you know if anything was changed or installed on the server?

You could certainly try re-installing GP, or maybe even a repair. If this persists, you may need to talk to GP Support about what’s causing this error.

-Victoria

(a) GetRecordsExtender of form SmartlistBuilder Object
(b) Stringoverflow on set ‘Record Count’ and if click on Debug, we get the same error as above – GetRecordsExtender of form SmartlistBuilder object’, 3830, 4,0,0……

These smartlist were OK all this while.

This only happen on the server but not on other client PC.

What should I do? Is GP corrupted and require reinstallation? I tried all the maintenance work at Smartlist builder such as Refresh Cache, Refresh Smartlist and Check Link.

Seeing the message has the word “Extender”, I also run all the maintenance work on Extender.

But all the above does not help a bit.

Any clue why this happen?

As Naseer has confirmed, Extender Views will not include the Extender notes, only windows. From what I can tell, you are right – all the notes are in EXT00150.

-Victoria

About Extender Notes, yes you are write you cannot create view on those notes through Extender View option. But you can create view through SQLServer.

Thanks

Am I correct that you cannot create an Extender view for Extender notes? This being the case, or other, it appears all details for Extender Notes are housed in the EXT00150 table – please confirm.

Thanks for your valuable support.

Regards

Stu

Thanks for this support. It resolved.

Naseer

I have noticed in GP 10.0 that SmartList does not handle NULLs very well. The way I typically address this is to use SQL views for all my SmartLists and to code around NULLs in SQL using something like:
coalesce(FIELD,'') as StringField
or
coalesce(FIELD,0) as NumberField

-Victoria

Thanks for prompt reply, I appreciate that. I did create a view by adding Extender tables into my previously built view. Result is coming up now, but it is showing some garbage charactors where ever the record is null. Why it is like that?
How can I remove that garbage?

Thanks

I have seen this happen if the Key Fields are not correct. You could also try creating a new Extender View with both the Extender windows and verifying that view still shows data.

-Victoria

I did the same steps but I could not get the result in verion GP 10. Why?

I have a new Smartlist created by using a new Extender View. Smartlist is working fine. But when I add a new Extender window into it, it does not come. Not a single field is appearing.

Can you help me in it?

Thanks