Maximizer 8 Performance

>My users are reporting a significant slow down in some tasks.

Can you be more specific?

quote:

Can you be more specific?

Of course I can Just didn't want the first post to be massive.

We have several address books of about 1GB each. Each with several hundred contacts and lots of associated documents/activities. There are only 3 active users on the network with no remotes. Server is P4 2.8Ghz, 1GB RAM, 10000 rpm raid array.

The two most noticable areas of low performance are switching address books and clicking ok or cancel after viewing an activity in hotlist tasks. I have spoken to the tech support from our reseller who have said that the hotlist performance is slow and they have reported a bug to Multiactive. However, they weren't very helpful regarding any general tips or advice to help in the meantime. I have rebuilt the address books (backup, then restore to new book) which didn't help.

I'm aware that switching address books etc is always going to be slow, however given that the server is now lots faster and address book loading is much slower (10-15 secs at least) I suspect something else is wrong.

As I said this is a new server so I'm wondering if maybe the server is configured slightly differently. I've turned off Opportunistic Locking (as on the old server) and I've also turned off SMB packet signing.

Anything other details you need?

If your users find that they are switching Address Books often, make sure they are aware that they can have multiple instances of Maximizer open at one time, with a different Address Book open in each one. Then they can [Alt-Tab] or whatever to switch instantly.

The Maximizer installer applies the Pervasive.SQL settings that are the best for Maximizer under the vast majority of circumstances, so tweaking of the P.SQL settings is generally discouraged. That said, the opportunistic locking and packet signing options you mentioned apply to SMB networking and not to Pervasive.SQL per se. Once the P.SQL client has established the connection to the P.SQL server (or gateway, in your case), the P.SQL engine handles the file access and the P.SQL client only communicates with the P.SQL server.

Other performance tips include...

CONFIGURATION:

- For best performance the P.SQL gateway should be the same machine on which the Address Book data files reside.

- Make sure that you have a permanent gateway assignment (~pvsw~.loc) in the Address Book folder. Pervasive's Gateway Locator utility can be used to verify that.

- Use Windows' Performance Monitor or similar tools to identify where potential bottlenecks are. Beefing up your server's horsepower won't do much if your network is bandwidth-constrained.

USAGE:

- Do not load the entire Address Book when Maximizer launches. Start with "last list" or "empty list" and then search for what you want.

- Turn off "Save Settings on Exit", close all windows except the Address Book window, then hit [Shift-Alt-F4] to save that window configuration. Then, when Maximizer launches it only opens the Address Book window; the other windows (Calendar, Email, Company Library, etc.) can be opened as required.

- Include UDFs in column views only when necessary, and never use a UDF as the first column in a column view.


That's all that springs to mind. Perhaps others can fill in anything I may have missed.

quote:

Originally posted by Gord:
If your users find that they are switching Address Books often, make sure they are aware that they can have multiple instances of Maximizer open at one time, with a different Address Book open in each one. Then they can [Alt-Tab] or whatever to switch instantly.

They already do this, interesting though that when I was speaking to the support guy at the reseller he recommended against doing it.

quote:

That said, the opportunistic locking and packet signing options you mentioned apply to SMB networking and not to Pervasive.SQL per se.

Thought as much, needed it for other software anyway, just thought it was worth mentioning.

quote:

- For best performance the P.SQL gateway should be the same machine on which the Address Book data files reside.

Check

quote:

- Make sure that you have a permanent gateway assignment (~pvsw~.loc) in the Address Book folder. Pervasive's Gateway Locator utility can be used to verify that.

Check

quote:

- Use Windows' Performance Monitor or similar tools to identify where potential bottlenecks are. Beefing up your server's horsepower won't do much if your network is bandwidth-constrained.

I will look into this again, but its definately not network capacity (its all 1Gbps - and I have also checked usage in perfmon) and % disk time doesn't seem too high either. Doing the same activity on the server is significantly quicker however, so I do wonder if there isn't some network related setting that is suboptimal atm.

quote:

- Do not load the entire Address Book when Maximizer launches. Start with "last list" or "empty list" and then search for what you want.

- Turn off "Save Settings on Exit", close all windows except the Address Book window, then hit [Shift-Alt-F4] to save that window configuration. Then, when Maximizer launches it only opens the Address Book window; the other windows (Calendar, Email, Company Library, etc.) can be opened as required.

- Include UDFs in column views only when necessary, and never use a UDF as the first column in a column view.

These are all very useful. I shall try these out.

quote:

That's all that springs to mind. Perhaps others can fill in anything I may have missed.

Thanks for your help, some useful stuff there. I will report back on how it goes.

Oh, yeah - the recommended network protocol is TCP/IP. It should be the only one enabled. In the Pervasive Control Center, check out the following:

On the gateway machine:

Configuration
> Server
> > Communication Protocols
> > > Supported Protocols

On the workstations:

Configuration
> Client
> > Communication Protocols
> > > Supported Protocols

quote:

Originally posted by Gord:
Oh, yeah - the recommended network protocol is TCP/IP. It should be the only one enabled.

Yep thats all already set. Think the defaults for that changed around Max 7 didnt they?

I have tried all the other things you mentioned and non seemed to make any difference. We already were only opening only 1 page at startup and while the entire address book list is loaded it didnt affect speed that much to load an empty list.

I've run performance monitor while opening databases etc and can't see anything out of place. In general disk, processor and network usage doesnt get close to 100%. There are a couple of spikes but over the 20-30second period it takes to open the address book it averages to really quite low.

Don't suppose you've got any other ideas?