Hello,

 

I'm new to FMS and I'm trying to figure out why opening a database is taking so long. When I open the DB over our gigabit LAN things work smoothly and the layout opens in 1-2 seconds, but if I switch to our Wireless LAN opening the same layout can take up to 90 seconds and if I try to connect via VPN from home then we're into the minutes time frame. All the calculations occur server side in FMS correct? So if it's sending the same amount of results data why does a drop in connection speed cause such a drastic change in load times, unless of course wer're sending a HUGE amount of data to the client. Is there a way to track how much data is getting sent to the client?

 

The size of the database is really quite tiny; something like 200k records / 3k fields.

 

Server Specs:

10.7 Mac

2x 2.93 Ghz Hexcores

16GB of 1333 Mhz DDR3 ram.

The only application it runs is FMS though it does alos serve a file store.

The CPU according to Activity Monitor never gets above 1-2% usage.

 

All the calculations occur server side in FMS correct? 

 

Wrong.

 

FMS will try to do a much of the workload it can but if there is anything that is specific to the user's session then the calcs need to be done at the client, not the server so FMS will send the client ALL the data it needs to do that.

 

Without seeing how your solution is designed and what it does as part of the opening sequence we can't tell you what to change.  But things to watch out for:

- reduce the number of portals on the opening screens

- reduce the number of unstored calcs on the opening layouts

- reduce the found set of records touched as part of the opening sequence

You can see how much data FMS pushes out from the FMS usage stats, both on the admin console and the stats.log (if you have enabled that feature on FMS)

When I work from home, instead of just opening filemaker and connecting to our db, I use logmein  and access my desktop their and then work on my db. much much faster, atleast in my case.