I created a new branch in the antville CVS that is called "need_for_speed" and contains optimizations that I didn't want to check into the main branch. They don't change the basic Antville architecture, but they do change how some things are done. The main motivation was to make antville run faster on my orange iBook and similar antique hardware. What I did is pretty simple:

• req.data.memberlevel is set in hopobject.onRequest(), so the membership level never ever has to be fetched within application code
• Where possible, things that were done by calling functions previosly are now done by directly accessing fields/properties, i.e. those functions which did nothing but convert/return a property have been mostly removed.
• Security functions which returned full localized error messages now only return the error message name. The full localized error message has to be retrieved by the caller if it is needed. (The latter isn't implemented yet ;-)

(Unfortunately, some changes sneaked in which don't really belong to the need_for_speed branch but have been lingering in my local repository: Creating stories offline is changed and polls don't require a title anymore and are rendered slightly different. Eventually we should/will discuss these separately.)

What I'd like you to do is to check if this branch really runs faster for you and if so, how much faster. You're also welcome to help finishing what I started and finding missing pieces.