First, I know that I need to test with my own data/documents to get the correct answer. Also, I know there are many, many variables that affect the speed. I am just looking for other peoples experiences.

Assumption:
1. Using text files for input.
2. Using Watch/Image.
3. Need to generate 100,000 invoice pages in PDF files.
4. Each invoice is 1 page.
5. The final result, each invoice in a separate PDF.

Is it quicker to generate (1) 100,000 page PDF and split it back into 100,000 individual PDFs.... OR .... is it quicker to generate 100,000 individual PDF's? Or would a hybrid be best, maybe generate (100) 1,000 page PDFs and split them?

BWW,

As you said, it all depends on your data, documents and a lot of other variables. There are cases where one approach(making a 100000 pages pdf and split it) will be better than the other(making 100000 pdf files).

For the one pdf with 100000 pages, it will be more efficient if you have large images in the Picture resources of your form. Those images are cached, and will not be reprocessed on every records. If you were to split your data, you would then process them 100000 times, and you would therefore lose performance. For static picture resources, I'd say making one pdf with 100000 pages will be better.

On the other hand, if you're using dynamic images, then they will not be cached no matter what. In that case then, generating a 100000 pages pdf file will take just as long as 100000 pdf files, and you might run into performance issues with the temp files becoming very big. And once it's generated, you have to run it througn the PDF Splitter, which will also take some time. So in this case, I would suggest just making 100000 pdf files.

Of course, these are just general opinions, as there could be many other factors that comes into play that would make us choose one approach versus the other.

Regards,
Raphaël Lalonde Lefebvre

Thanks Raphael! That is exactly the information I was needing. I really appreciate your feedback.