It takes over 8.5 seconds to render the response for a table containing 10,000 rows when talking to a MySQL database. I think I have identified "chattiness" in the code. If all fields are being selected (even though they will not be displayed as per the grid.fields parameter), I would not expect additional select statements outside of the COUNT(*) statement. The data is already in memory and just needs to be parsed. What does everyone think? Model snippet:

db.define_table('allstats',
                Field('pdate','datetime'),
                Field('class','string',length=45),
                Field('instance','string',length=45),
                Field('parameter','string',length=45),
                Field('hostname','string',length=45),
                Field('lastv','double'),
                Field('minv','double'),
                Field('maxv','double'),
                Field('avgv','double'),
                Field('cntv','integer'),
                Field('peaktime','datetime'),
                Field('sumv','integer'),
                Field('sitelocation','string',length=30),
                migrate=False)
webgrid = local_import('webgrid')

Controller snippet:

grid = webgrid.WebGrid(crud)
    grid.datasource = db(db.allstats.id<30000) # Set
    grid.crud_function = 'index' # Set the function where crud will be exposed.
    grid.fields = ['allstats.pdate','allstats.parameter','allstats.peaktime']
    grid.pagesize = 100
    return dict(grid=grid()) #notice the ()

Wireshark capture from client:

SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=1;
SET sql_mode='NO_BACKSLASH_ESCAPES';
SELECT allstats.id, allstats.pdate, allstats.class, allstats.instance, allstats.parameter, allstats.hostname, allstats.lastv, allstats.minv, allstats.maxv, allstats.avgv, allstats.cntv, allstats.peaktime, allstats.sumv, allstats.sitelocation FROM allstats WHERE allstats.id<30000 LIMIT 100 OFFSET 0;
SELECT count(*) FROM allstats WHERE allstats.id<30000;
SELECT allstats.id, allstats.pdate FROM allstats WHERE allstats.id>0;
SELECT allstats.id, allstats.parameter FROM allstats WHERE allstats.id>0;
SELECT allstats.id, allstats.peaktime FROM allstats WHERE allstats.id>0;
commit