Hi Michael,
very good question.
The bad news is that OM doesn't have an internal DB to store the data in, which would make it "easy" to handle mass data in a very fast way.
All the data persistance in OM is done via the
<OAL> XML Schema.
To put numbers into that:
Loading 12800 Elements (-> ~10260 Observation, ~2460 Objects, some Scopes, Eyepieces, ...) on an Intel Core2 Duo, 2.53GHz with 3GB RAM (WinXP) took me ~30seconds. (Java 6)
Saving the same set of data (same machine) took me ~15 seconds.
I think this is ok (for me).
If you have more data (or your personal feeling of performance is different than mine), this is where the good news is:
OM Stores its data in the <OAL> Data Format, which is supported by many other applications like:
-
DeepSky Log (Online Observation Database, free)
-
Deep-Sky Planner (commercial)
-
Eye & Telescope (commercial)
and I think KStars supporting <OAL> is also already released. (Not sure about that...at least it should be supported with the latest version)
Those applications (at least I know from the first three) use a internal DB, that
should be able to handle more observations/elements faster
*.
*=Whatever "faster" means
So, OM is free and open, but it certainly has it's limits. I don't want to suppress that fact. But it's no dead end street. If you pushed OM to it's limits, there are other applications which are able to import OM data without any data loss.
Or, in case that a workaround would fit you, you can for sure create multiple files to store your observations in. With that you bypass the mass data problem as well. (But this also has its disadvantages like it's harder to create statistics, etc.)
Hope this answers your question.
Best
Dirk