Query to fetch table names from AX takes too long - axapta

Question

I am using the following code in X++ to get table names:
client server public static container tableNames()
{
tableId tableId;
int tablecounter;
Dictionary dict = new Dictionary();
container tableNamesList;
for (tablecounter=1; tablecounter<=dict.tableCnt(); tablecounter++)
{
tableId = dict.tableCnt2Id(tablecounter);
tableNamesList = conIns(tableNamesList,1,dict.tableName(tableId));
}
return tableNamesList;
}
Business connector code :
tablesList = (AxaptaContainer)Global.ax.
CallStaticClassMethod("Code_Generator", "tableNames");
for (int i = 1; i <= tablesList.Count; i++)
{
tableName = tablesList.get_Item(i).ToString();
tables.Add(tableName);
}
The application hangs for 2 - 3 minutes while fetching data. What could be the cause? Any optimizations?

Answer 1

Rather than use ConIns, use +=, it will be faster
tableNamesList += dict.tableName(tableId);
ConIns has to work out where in the container to place the insert. += just adds it to the end

Answer 2

As mentioned before avoid conIns() when appending elements to a container because it makes a new copy of the container. Use += instead to append in place.
Also, you may want to check for permissions and leave out temporary tables, table maps, and other special cases. Standard Ax has a method to build a table name lookup form that takes these things into account. Check the method Global::pickTable() for details.
You could avoid some calls through the business connector as well and build the entire list in Ax in a similar way and return that in a single function call.

Answer 3

If you are using Dynamics Ax 2012, you could skip the treeNode stuff and use the SysModelElement table to fetch the data and return it immediately as a .Net Array to easy up things on the other side.
public static System.Collections.ArrayList FetchTableNames_ModelElementTables()
{
SysModelElement element;
SysModelElementType elementType;
System.Collections.ArrayList tableNames = new System.Collections.ArrayList();
;
// The SysModelElementType table contains the element types
// and we need the recId for the next selection
select firstonly RecId
from elementType
where elementType.Name == 'Table';
// With the recId of the table element type,
// select all of the elements with that type (hence, select all of the tables)
while select Name
from element
where element.ElementType == elementType.RecId
{
tableNames.Add(element.Name);
}
return tableNames;
}
}

Answer 4

Alright, I have tried a lot of things and in the end, I decided to create a table consisting of all table names. This table will have a Job populating it. I am fetching records from this table.