[reportlab-users] PDF Generation performance

[Shayan Raghavjee]

Hi guys,

I'm having a major performance issue, and it's nothing that a pill off 
the internet could solve, I was hoping you could give me some input. 
I've been using Reportlab for a few months, but never really needed any 
huge reports. Some reports have taken ages to build, but that was more 
due to the SQL statement complexity than anything else.

I'm currently working on something that doesn't require too much heavy 
SQL stuff, but does generate PDFs with sometimes well over a hundred 
pages. I've noticed Reportlab takes an age to build the file, a 100 page 
document typically took 15 minutes, which is far outside the required 
speed. I'm not entirely sure where the problem lies. The form is 
basically a table with some required information on top, and another at 
the bottom, which is a table of tables. Maybe it's too complex?

How long should it take for 100 pages? Is there any way to make it 
faster, using templates or something, because most of the info is 
duplicated.

Any help, or ideas would be welcomed with open arms.

Thanks,
Shayan Raghavjee
St. James Software