Duffbert's Random Musings

1 -

2 - Doesn't say if reader/author fields are involved,
Sounds like there is no index on this database.
Stephan Wissel has some comments on this:
{ Link }

3 - Another option for answers that was tweeted in relation to this was to try the Stack Overflow site.

4 - I would highly suggest the question be reposted to stack overflow, with sample code and a redirection of the question away from asking about how documents are retrieved via note id, etc. Performance/scalability issues like this are not due to core api level issues as the question implies, but are oft due to misunderstandings in the how the xpages runtime fundamentally works, and the high use of several performance-sucking design decisions, which are usually exacerbated in repeat controls.

5 - if the datasource of our repeat control is a view, use the viewEntry to get data instead of NotesDocument

6 - Hi, I got pushed on to other projects and haven't been back here in a while. Anyway here are a few more details:
There are no reader/authors fields.
The database is indexed.
The way that the noteids are provided to the repeat control is not relevant. This can be put in as a static list so it *cant* take any time. It's when the system heads off to get the document by noteid that the time starts ticking away. It's easy to try this for yourself. Create an empty test db. Create a form called "X" and a view and create 60 documents. Create XPage with a repeat control that accesses data from all 60 documents. See that it opens instantly. Now create a new form called "Y". Then run something like this:
dim doc as notesdocument
dim i as long
for i = 1 to 999999
set doc = db.CreateDocument
doc.Form = "Y"
doc.DummyNumber = i
doc.Title = "dummy doc"
call doc.Save(true, false, true)
next

Now watch paint dry as your XPage opens