Mathematica provides access to a huge amount of curated data. But most of this is so slow and so inconvenient to retrieve that it is literally next to useless.
Take this simple query as an example:
t = AbsoluteTime[];
Entity["Plant", "Species:GlycineMax"]["TaxonomyGraph"] // AbsoluteTiming
AbsoluteTime[] - t
This took 3.5 minutes (!!!) on my machine, despite AbsoluteTiming reporting merely 9 seconds. On a second try, after restart, it took 4.5 minutes.
This is a typical problem whenever trying to retrieve curated data. Even the 9 seconds would be much too slow for anything else than a one-time interactive query. Use in a program (loop) is out of the question.
Is there a fix for this kind of problem?
Given the great amount of effort Wolfram put into developing this functionality, why are these basic usability issues not being fixed? I am a bit puzzled because being "knowledge-based" is the main marketing point of the Wolfram Language.
Does anyone on this forum seriously use these functions? If yes, how can you manage the terrible performance?
