Where can I find information on Filemaker Server 16 caching and (re)calculation? I have this problem: a customer that I took over upgraded to Server 16. Workstations are still on 15. Now, a soritng... status dialog appears very often, something that didn't happen with the previous version (which was 15, I believe).

I know there are changes made to the way FMS determines what to recalculate and when, but I can't find a document or webpage with a good explanation. I'd like to get a clue about where to look for the source of the problem. Anyone with a reference or hint where to look?

Some data: server is a MacMini corei5, running 10.11.6, 12 GByte RAM, with a normal HDD (no SSD yet). Server cache is set at 4Gbyte. Database is not particularly big, but has a lot of filtered portals (where you'd have many related records that are filtered on the client). This may be a cause, but then: why now and not in a previous version of FMS? 

Edited July 13, 20178 yr by typewriter

Double-check the previous version of FMS.  It could be older than 15.

What the exact dialog?  I haven't seen a sorting one come up but I have seen a few "find in progress..." dialogs even when the users are not doing anything.  All in older upgraded solutions, never in brand new ones.

In working with FMI support, the first step was to make sure that none of the user layouts used the Classic theme and that has significantly cut down this happening.

How many users at peak?  That mac mini is not powerful at all, not much in terms of processing power and certainly not in disk i/o.  What do the FMS stats.log and topcallstats.log say?  Those two helped us a lot in finding areas to make the design of the solution better.  With many filtered portals it certainly seems like there is lots of room for that.

 

The exact dialog is a simple progress dialog: Sorting...' with a progress bar and a Cancel button. No information on the table or field, not even the number of records or bytes. Users often click the cancel button and the dialog disappears, but often re-appears a couple of seconds later. Although a MacMini is not the fastest beast on the block, there are only 3 or 4 users at maximum at the same time. Problems seem to be worse when connected through a VPN.

The server could be upgraded form an earlier version, I'll check on that. But you have to remove a previous version of FMS first when upgrading to FMS16? I did not do the upgrade myself.

All layouts are still in Classic. I have told the owner that that would be an issue to be addressed.

May the use of SuperContainer have influence?

 

 

Yes, you have to uninstall to install the new version.  But the very first order of business is to get rid of the classic theme.  That is absolutely the #1 priority.

That and make use of the Top Call Stats log, see if the server is busy at those sorting times and if so with what table and field.