I have a four phase process and want to get some crude formula to give a decent estimate of total completion time. I do not want minutes/seconds but just want to increment the status bar after each phase, then for phases 3 and 4 to be able to increment with each successive iteration and action.
Phases are:
1. Open database connection
2. Run Query
3. Iterate through result set and create a generic list of objects
4. Write each object to a text file
After I have run the query (Step 2) I can easily get the total number of records returns, then increment the progress bar's progress accurately to better so that for steps 3 and 4 I will get more accurate the closer to the end I get.
Can anyone give me a quick formula for this?
Thanks,
newbieweb
P.S. I posted this on game programming too, since I imagine there are lots of such calculations needing to be made for realism.
This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.
Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.
If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.
Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.
Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.
Access the answers to your technology questions today.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.
Try it out and discover for yourself.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.
Let's say you have 100 steps in your progress bar.
At end of step 1, set to 1*100/4=25.
At end of step 2, set to 2*100/4=50.
Let's say the result set has N items. At each iteration i of step 3, set to ((i / N)*100/4)+50.
Let's say the result of step 3 was M objects. At each iteration j of step 4, set to ((j / M)*100/4)+75.
Sounds like a question from a summer class quiz. :-)
It looks like step 2 is the problem, unless you can estimate how many results will come back somehow. I guess step 1 is fairly consistent timewise?
Run steps 3 and 4 on a reasonable size dataset, so that it takes a comfortabley measureable chunk of time. Time how long each step takes and then you can use those values to predict roughly how long the proccess will take given any number of results from step 2.
Step 1: A progress bar based on typical time.
Step 2: If you can give feedback on how many results are coming back do that. You could even have a sort of progress bar that grows as results come back. Otherwise, a busy display; a spinning dial or something of that kind, just to let the user know the program hasn't stopped.
In the past I've used sort grid of squares rather than a bar. A square is filled for an amount of proccessing. If you just used a bar it could get wider than the screen.
Step 3 and 4: Display progress based on the estimated time.
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: wht1986Posted on 2009-08-25 at 11:47:41ID: 25180825
Ive always used 2 progress bars, one positioned just above the other. The top one would be the progress of phases (1,2,3,4), and the bottom one is the progress during a particular phase.
I just added some sleep calls to slow the loops down in the code, but you should get the idea where I am going
Select allOpen in new window
progress bars