Drop Down List Box Web Form Item Limitation

[brandon]

I have a browser compatible form that queries a web service for a list of
values to populate an InfoPath drop down list box with. This interaction has
worked wonderfully, asside for the seizure inducing screen refresh flickers.
In some circumstances this list returns a large amount of results which we
expect and need.

Now, when I preview my form in InfoPath all of the expected values are
returned. However, once deployed as a web form, I receive an error for this
exact same volume of information when the drop down list is populated. Is
there a limit to the number of items a drop down list box can contain in
InfoPath WEB form that is different when viewing the form solely in InfoPath?
If so what is it and why? Shouldn't they behave exactly the same?

Thanks!
Brandon

 

[S.Y.M. Wong-A-Ton]

What does the error say?

 

[brandon]

That's what's so wierd, the InfoPath form in the web browser gives me an
"Error accessing recordset" type error. It's not having an error doing that
what-so-ever. It can access the dataset fine when the result set is less than
say 1500(an arbitrarily large number of items for a ddl) items.

 

[S.Y.M. Wong-A-Ton]

brandon, I've never seen that error message before. Are you sure that is the
*exact* error message? There are two things that might be going on: 1. You
are having a security issue (which by the sound of it you are sure you don't
have), or 2. the data set is too large for Forms Services to deal with (take
a look at Andrew's post on Session state). If you're currently using direct
data connections in the form template, you may want to try replacing them
with UDCs and see if that makes a difference.

BTW, are 1500 items in a list absolutely necessary?

 

[brandon]

The error literally came up with the normal Infopath web form error dialog
and said "error accessing dataset" or "error accessing recordset". I had not
encountered this error and it seemed rather obscure, giving me no real
indication of which direction I should take in fixing it.

At any rate, I've since modified the process to add additional filtering so
we can get around the issue in our R&D phase, but it is very likely that we
may have an instance where we would require a significant number of items to
be returned in the drop down list and I was more curious to find the
limitations for that purpose. That's really what we are doing right now in
evaluating InfoPath as a solution pushing the boundaries to see what we
can/can't do before rolling it out.

I was able to add a text box, button, and drop down list to simulate
searching, but it's ugly and hits the web server each time someone clicks the
search button, which I'm not so sure I like. Short of being able to send a
large list over to the form on load, and allowing the form to slim down this
same list to propogate a filtered set of results, which I was unable to do in
it's current state, I don't see much of another alternative.

At any rate, I'm going to look into the data size of the session like you
recommended and see if that solves the problem. I seem to remember getting
something similar with ASP.Net stuff as well with it's buffers. Thank you
both for all your help. I really appreciate it!

Brandon