[Zope] performance concern

[Bill Ort]

Hi,

We are new to Zope and are trying to create a form- and db-intensive web
application using Zope 2.4.0 (though I'm testing in 2.5 also).  I've noticed
that our complex forms (which use nested dtml-in loops) are running
extremely slow, taking more than 30 seconds on the server side (450MHz
Pentium II w/ linux).  So I created a snippet benchmark and noticed
something peculiar, in that running a simple loop for the first time is
often very slow, however in subsequent refreshes of the document the loop
runs almost 8-10 times faster.  I turned off caching as much as I know how
(in the browser and zope).  Here is the benchmark I'm using:

<dtml-var standard_html_header>
<dtml-comment>Note: My standard header turns off browser
caching.</dtml-comment>
<dtml-call "REQUEST.set('starttime',_.DateTime().millis())">
Start Time (ms): <dtml-var starttime><br>
<dtml-call
"REQUEST.set('testlist',['1','2','3','4','5','6','7','8','9','10'])">
<dtml-in "testlist">
  <dtml-var sequence-item>&nbsp;
</dtml-in>
<br>
<dtml-call "REQUEST.set('endtime',_.DateTime().millis())">
End Time (ms): <dtml-var endtime><br>
<hr size=1>
Delay (ms) = <dtml-var "endtime - starttime"><br>
<dtml-var standard_html_footer>

Any help would be extremely welcome...as is, the site is too slow to demo to
potential clients.
Thanks,
Bill Ort
billort@billort.com