Optimise XML performance for Web Services Manager and PHP

[michael3785]

We are using Web Services Manager to provide access to customers for certain functions in our database. We have up til recently been using IWP as well, but are in the process of switching to CWP using PHP. However performance problems are now putting both at risk. Our config is as follows:

Database Server: Intel i7 QC 2.4Ghz, 4GB RAM, Win Server 2008 R2, SSD drives in RAID1, FMS11v3 Advanced

Web Server: Xeon 2.4Ghz, 3GB RAM, Win Server 2003, RAID10 SATA drives, FMS11v3 Advanced, PHP 5.3 with FastCGI

Looking at performance of the new PHP site we are developing we have noticed that it suffers from a problem we have long experienced with Web Services Manager which is just how slow the Filemaker server XML engine is. It takes 15+ seconds to return the Web Services Manager wsdl XML and even simple queries on indexed fields via the PHP interface take 5-10 seconds when in IWP and using the Filemaker Pro client, the same query returns almost instantly.

We have done a suggested fix on the config file for thr Filemaker PHP to use 127.0.0.1 instead of references to localhost and this has maybe made a small difference in performance. As per the spec above we already swicthed from the Filemaker-installed PHP version to our own with FastCGI and that did nothing. So it all points to the slow performance of the XML engine that is actually returning data to the Filemaker API and the Web Services Manager PHP script.

Does anyone have any experience of this and how to improve the XML performance of the Filemaker server. It is really depressing that so much is possible using this interface but right now, we cannot practically use it as users will not tolerate the porr performance...

All comments much appreciated. Thanks.

Michael