[platform-swt-dev] Optimizing SWT grids/tables for real-time data

["Emil Tarazi" <emilioo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, I am working on building a financial-data tool. I receive market
data, real-time quote and trade data from a feed and currently
displaying this data for ~3500 stocks  in a simple SWT virtual table (table has 40 columns, mostly floats - maybe 30 columns change with each tick). So
there are about 3500 rows and the user might want to scroll down to any
of these rows at any time. Financial market data can change many times
a second but I currently only refresh my virtual table once a second
via an asyncExec() that in turn calls a Table.clearAll().

CPU utilization remains quite high - a
profiling tool reveals 10 to 15% of my CPU is being used to refresh the
screen. (i run a dual-cpu xeon workstation w/ win XP). Performance is a
lot better on a 4-cpu linux server, but still pretty dismal if you want
to run multiple GUIs off the same server.

I was wondering if there were any suggestions for enhancing
performance in such real-time display applications. Are there
swt  or other java components/toolkits I can use that are optimized for fast gui updates? any
input is appreciated. Anyone ever use QT Jambi with Eclipse/RCP?