What is content of Annotation Bookmarks?

[rwunderlich]

I am working with a customer who makes extensive use of the object Notes feature in his app.  The .shared file associated with this app is quite large.  Using the SharedFileViewer power tool to investigate, we see the Annotation elements and associated Bookmark element generated by the "take snapshot" option when creating the Note. The Annotation elements are a few hundred bytes each as expected. What's interesting is that the size of the associated Bookmark element is over 200k each, event though there are only a few selections in force.

I experimented with a small app on my own server. The snapshot bookmarks range from 7k to 9k depending on which object I place the note on. So there seems to be some object information in the bookmark?

I'm curious to know if this is WAD and what information beyond selections is using the space. At 200k per annotation on the customer app, the shared file will get quite large.

-Rob

http://masterssummit.com

http://qlikviewcookbook.com

[Peter_Cammaert]

Maybe the snapshot itself (in JPG or TIFF format)? Or Base64 encoded to get an ASCII representation?

[rwunderlich]

I think that may be a good guess Peter, based on the sizes and behavior I'm seeing. But the followup question is how would I access this image from within QV?

-Rob

[Peter_Cammaert · Accepted solution]

AFAIK there are three possible routes to take, of which only one I trust to produce decent output (1st one)

1. Powertools: export the notes to xml using the Shared File Viewer Powertool. Then try to decode anything that looks like a binary block. Probably encoded in Base64. This is the only method that I think has the best chance of success...
2. QMS API: not sure if there is any API method available at all to manipulate or export Server objects, but there could be something present that I don't know about.
3. QlikView DOM & Macro API (in QV Desktop or OCX): I give this one only a tiny chance. Or in other words, I'm almost sure that Server objects cannot be accessed through the Macro API. But you never know

Best,

Peter

[rwunderlich]

Peter, Thanks for the suggestion of exporting to XML from the SharedFileViewer.  That allowed me to figure out what the space was being used for.

When you create a bookmark, you have options to:

- Save selections

- Include Layout State

- Include Scroll postions

Apparently, the bookmark created by "Take Snapshot" utilizes all these options (under the covers, you don't actually get a choice).  Selections takes a relatively small amount of space dependent on number of selected fields and values.  Layout state on the other hand, captures several pieces of information about every object in the app. The customer app I was looking at has 1000 objects, hence the large bookmark size.

I learned something new. There is significant .shared file resource used when using "Include Layout State".

-Rob

http://masterssummit.com

http://qlikviewcookbook.com

[Peter_Cammaert]

Thanks for posting your detailed findings, Rob. I'm gonna keep the link to this discussion in a safe place, as I'm sure it will come in handy some time in the future.

Peter