Filemaker File Takes 5 Minutes To Open

[REM64]

Hi All,

We have Filemaker Server 5.5 and clients that use Filemaker 6.0. There is a Filemaker file that is 430MEG. The end user claims nothing has changed for over a year and that they never had an issue until now. For the past month the end user tells me it takes them 5 minutes for this file to open. I confirmed this by trying to open the file on my laptop. Once the file is open everything is fine. I contacted Filemaker Tech Support but they don't support Filemaker Server 5.5 or Filemaker 6.0 so they were not helpful to me. Could anyone provide any suggestions I could try?

Thanks so much,

REM

[stanley]

REM:

Welcome to the Forums.

It sounds to me like you're just experiencing a networking bottleneck, but there are a number of possible explanations.

1. Something has changed on the hardware network itself, causing a general slowdown. You would notice slower performance in all network activity.

2. The FMServer hard drive is nearly full, causing a slowdown there.

3. The FMServer box is being accessed by other applications, is running other applications, or is being used for purposes other than just for FMServer. This is the most likely suspect.

4. The file, when opened, is displaying a list of the entire db, meaning that the whole 430MB has to come over the network in order for the client to view it.

5. The file needs to be optimized/compacted. To do this, shut down FMServer and then open the file on the FMServer box using FMPro. Under the File... menu, select "Save A Copy As..." and select "compressed copy". If this is a relational system, you will have to rename the copy to the name of the original before restarting FMServer. Save the original, because you never know what may go wrong.

6. The file is corrupt. This is big trouble, and you'd have to go back to an old copy of the same file (one which does not display the slow opening behavior) and import data from the newer file into it, then use the old file. I doubt this is the problem, as slow opening is not one of the give-away symptoms.

That's a quick list of your possibilities. I'd suggest it is #3, #4 or #5.

Good luck.

-Stanley

[REM64]

Stanley,

Thanks so much for your suggestions. I will try options 3 - 5 from your instructions tomorrow and post back.

Thanks a bunch,

Bob

(REM64)

[REM64]

Stanley,

I just opened the file in Filemaker Pro version 6.0 and I do not see a "File, Save A Copy As" function.I didn't shut down the Filemaker Server. I just wanted to verify I could do this function but I don't see that option in the File menu. Would this compact function be done another way?

Bob

[Vaughan]

The file is hosted with FM Server, so you need to go to the FMS box and close the file, then open it in FMP and do the maintenance work.

Note that if the file is still shared with FMS, opening it with FMP will probably trash it, so make backups and work carefully and methodically.

[REM64]

Vaughan,

Thanks for your tip. I will shutdown Filemaker Server first, then make a backup copy of this file, then open up Filmaker Pro and do the optimize/compact function Stanley noted in option 5 of his notes.

Thanks all!

[Vaughan]

The correct procedure is to close the files using the FMS Remote Administration tool -- this step could take several minutes so be patient. Only when all files are closed should you then go to the server box and stop FMS.

[REM64]

Vaughan,

The Remote Administration was never setup. I'm not sure actually how to set this up? Anyway, I rebooted the server (this needed to be done anyway to run some Windows Updates), stopped the Filemaker Server service, opened the file in question and then saved a copy of the file as a compressed file, renamed the compressed file to the original name, restarted the Filemaker Server service. I will check tomorrow to see if this improves the response time.

Thank you for your replies. Could you fill me in a little more on the FMS Remote Administration (I.E. What is it? Any gotchas to setting it up?)

Thanks

[Vaughan]

The reason for closing the files with the Remote Admin Tool (RAT) is that the Windows Services manager thingy only allows something like 120 seconds for a service to close. If you have a lot of big files open in FMS it can take a long time (ie more than 120 seconds) for the caches to flush.

So set the RAT up so that next timwe you can do it properly.

[REM64]

Vaughn,

Thanks for the tip.

As an FYI compressing the file did not work. It still takes about 5 minutes to open the file. I placed a call to Filemaker Tech Support and they suggested I try the following:

(1) Try opening the file and doing a File==>Recover function to see if there is any internal problems with the file.

(2) Indexing - Suggested to remove the indexing but i'm not sure if the end user will go for this. I don't think indexing is the problem because we have a backup file of this file that had 177 indexed records. This file opens quickly with no problems. The current file has 207 indexed records (not that much more).

Thanks for all the help.