We are pleased to announce two ways to substantially improve the performance of browser operations with Windchill and Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire:

· 14-76% Workspace Display Performance Improvement with Microsoft Internet Explorer Hotfix

· 30-50% Workspace Refresh Improvement in 8.0 M020 + Wildfire 2.0 M210 or 3.0 M020

14-76% Workspace Display Performance Improvement with Microsoft Internet Explorer Hotfix

PTC has worked closely with to Microsoft to develop, validate, and optimize a new enhancement to Microsoft Internet Explorer that substantially improves display and refresh performance for:

· Workspaces (Improving refresh time by 14-76% for workspaces with from 1000 to 8000 objects)

· Any page or operation that includes a workspace refresh (e.g. download, add to workspace, checkout, checkin, update)

· Pages with large tables

· Wizards like the one used for promotion requests

The Microsoft Internet Explorer performance enhancement (a.k.a “the Microsoft IE hotfix”) improves the performance of larger workspaces (e.g. 2k-8k objects) much more (percentage-wise) than smaller workspaces.

The Microsoft hotfix combined the Workspace Refresh Improvement in 8.0 M020 + Wildfire 2.0 M210 or 3.0 M020 substantially improves the scalability of workspaces. In other words, the slope of browser response time versus the number of objects in the workspace is now linear and flatter (versus parabolic) - this is very significant improvement.

The Microsoft Internet Explorer performance enhancement (a.k.a “the Microsoft IE hotfix”) improves performance for operations in both the embedded Pro/ENGINEER browser and in a standalone Microsoft Internet Explorer browser.

The Microsoft IE hotfix works with all Windchill releases (6.2.6, 7.0, & 8.0) as well as Pro/INTRALINK 8.0, though testing was only done with Windchill PDMLink 8.0.

The Microsoft IE hotfix is immediately available for

· Windows XP SP2 (32-bit),

· Windows XP (64-bit version) ,

· Windows 2003 SP1, and Windows 2003 x64.

Note: Unfortunately, the Microsoft IE hotfix is not available for Windows 2000 since it is now in Extended Support.

Additionally, Microsoft has told us that the hotfix should be included in Windows XP SP3, Internet Explorer 7.0, as well as Windows Vista when they become available.

To Get the Hotfix - You Must Call Microsoft Help and Support

First – Read PTC TPI 133412

Please read PTC TPI 133412. You can find a description of the performance issue and details about how to install and configure the Microsoft hotfix in this TPI: Description: “Client Embedded And Standalone Browser Performance Improvements Available With Microsoft Hotfix 919237 "Performance Configuration Available For Microsoft JScript Component"

Second – Call Microsoft Help and Support to get the Hotfix

Call Microsoft Technical Support to obtain the hotfix (Microsoft Tech Support: http://support.microsoft.com/contactussupport/?ws=support).

Ask for the Microsoft hotfix for Article 919237, "You may experience slow performance when you view a Web page that uses JScript in Internet Explorer 6". Microsoft will make the hotfix available for download to you.

Third – Install the Hotfix per the Instructions Provided by Microsoft with the Hotfix and Configure per PTC TPI 133412

Install the hotfix following the instructions provided by Microsoft following the configuration information detailed in TPI 133412

In the future we anticipate that the hotfix will be available by download directly from Microsoft. Additionally, PTC is working with Microsoft to obtain permission to redistribute the hotfix.

30-50% Workspace Refresh Improvement in 8.0 M020 + Wildfire 2.0 M210 or 3.0 M020

We implemented a two part workspace display performance enhancement into

• Windchill PDMLink, ProjectLink, Foundation and Pro/INTRALINK 8.0 M020
• Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire
  2.0 M210 and later
  3.0 M020 and later

Using these maintenance releases yields improvements of 30-50% for workspaces with 1000 to 6000 objects. The performance gain gets better as the number of objects increases in workspace, as measured for up to 6067 items in workspace.

Upgrading just Windchill or just Pro/ENGINEER will give some performance improvements but not as substantial as using both of the specified releases or later.

The workspace display performance enhancement in 8.0 M020 + Wildfire 2.0 M210 or 3.0 M020 also improves the performance gain of operations which include workspace refresh steps like check-In, download & check-out operations from the invoked from within a browser.

P.S - Hardware Matters

One last thing - our testing of the IE hotfix on two different workstations, one faster, and the other slower, also confirmed that faster (client) hardware can substantially improve workspace display performance – something to think about if you have the chance to upgrade your workstations.