Horrible Slow over Remote Host

[Fred Young]

Hi everyone.

This is what I've got and the story of my problem.

I have a Solution with approx 2000 clients, 10 staff, 50 products and about 30 manufactures.

It has Several Layouts, portals and relations.

Also, script triggers and calculated value lists and validations.

I got a host "MacUSA" but it takes almost 30 seconds just to enter the first layout. If I create new records it takes about 10sec before something happens and the same if I create new portal rows (ie. Note Utility) and just swishing between records has a delay on 5 seconds.

I got 1 BIG portal that contains 4 checkbox fields, several dropdowns, popupmenus and text fields, many of them with conditional formating and that one might be a reason why it goes slow (I've got no clue at this point)

Now, the question I've got is:

Is there any way to "pre-cache" major parts of the records in all the several layouts on the startup or any other way to make the solution faster?

The thing is, if I just browse my records and then later on goes back to a record I already visited it pops up almost instant.

My skills in FM11 is somewhere between beginner and intermediate.

Thankful for ANY help I can get, thanks.

[Vaughan]

if I just browse my records and then later on goes back to a record I already visited it pops up almost instant

This is FileMaker Pro caching the data to improve performance. There is not much you can do yourself except to design to minimise data load.

Things that require huge amounts of data:

summary fields

list views

sorting

sorted portals and relationships

non-native graphics on layouts

[John May - Point In Space]

Don't forget unstored calculations.

- John

[Søren Dyhr]

Indeed John - a good read on how to achive it:

http://www.geistinteractive.com/content/inventory-transactions

--sd

[David Jondreau]

I would add value lists that use filtered relationships or that display a second field while storing a key.

I think users are more forgiving when a application launches. I would have those slow layouts "pre-load" during opening.

[MacUSA]

Freddy,

Dan from MacUSA.net here.

I can't find your account in our records using your name. We have numerous accounts in Thailand so I can't determine which one is you. Knowing which server you are on may help me better understand your speed issues. Some servers are FileMaker Server Advanced 9, some 10, and others 11. Please let me know which server your database is on or your organization name.

All previous supplied suggestions are good ones. From experienced sources. Sometimes you have to jump through a lot of inconvenient hoops to get to the solution or a compromise. That's why I'm going to provide a few FileMaker Forum links that provide general optimization info. Ignore the server portion of these pages. We've optimized our servers according to FileMaker's suggestions and 15 years of experience. Just follow the network, database and computer system suggestions.

Optimizing Network Performance for Shared Databases

Performance Optimization of FileMaker Databases

After you've optimized your database try to troubleshoot further by doing something like:

• Duplicate the slow performing layout for testing purposes
• On the duplicate layout delete one element at a time from the suspicious portal area
• Test after each change
  

Let us know your results.

Thanks,

Dan McFalls

MacUSA.net

FileMaker Host

708-233-6638

[Fred Young]

Hi guys!

Thanks for the heads up, now I removed all portals, sorts and unsorted calc.

Now I have a last problem.

It takes like over a minute just to open the database. The Database contains approx. 8000 records and is the size of 16mb, without the records it's approx 5mb... Must each of my remote users download the entire database upon connecting or why does it take so long just to open it?

My opening scripts only adds 4 values to global variables, running a simple check filemaker version script and goes to my "home" layout.

Thanks for all the help.