Horrible Slow over Remote Host - Suggestions?

[fredyoung]

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.

[Weetbicks]

The FileMaker network architecture is built in a way that records must be downloaded from the server to your client machine in order to view them. Hence why it is so slow first time, and faster subsequent times, they are thusly cached on your machine. If the server machine has a slow upload speed, then that affects the speed at which records can be sent to your client machine. Conversely, a slow download speed on client machine will affect the speed at which you can receive those records. the ideal situation is both fast download/upload speeds on both server & client.

record size is a factor also, because entire records are downloaded, if your records contain many many fields with lots of data, then record sizes are larger and thus take longer to download. The tip here is to choose your storage options wisely on fields. If you have calculation on the table that are indexed but don't need to be, consider making them unstored instead. You cannot request and get a single field value from a record from the FileMaker server, if you request any single field, the entire record is sent to you.

Having said that there are a few factors which contribute to slow speed. First is your internet connection, obviously the slower the connection, the slower records are downloaded and the slower they display.

Next is what is actually on this layout. Portals are interesting things. Lets take a portal that shows 10 rows. If that portal is unsorted, and the relationship the portal uses is also unsorted, then FileMaker server will just send you the first 10 records visible for the portal. No sort means no complexity. When you scroll down in the portal, your client sends a request for the next record, which it receives, that's all fine.

If, however, the portal/relationship is sorted, FileMaker sends you EVERY SINGLE RECORD through that relationship in one hit. this is because sorting occurs on the client-side, and in order to sort records it must have every single record. In short, sorting is a huge performance hit on slow remote connections. If you can avoid sorting portals on your layouts, I suggest you do so. Either that or modify the relationship to get fewer records...

Again everything comes back to what FileMaker server has to send you. So container fields with large graphics will affect performance. Scripts that create a record can be slow if that new record appears in a sorted portal, the portal re-sorts itself.

A refresh window script step which has flush cache turned on is a real No-no for databases accessed over remote connection. A flush cache essentially clears your client-side cache of all records, which means you need to re-download all the records all over again, avoid it where you can.

Any calculation fields, calculations (ie conditional formatting) that appears on the layout can have a performance hit. Every field/record the calculation references must be downloaded. If you have a calculation that references fields on the current record only, then that is ok. If you have a calc though that references related records, this can be a big performance hit - again if the relationship it references is sorted, then all records are downloaded otherwise the calculation will not know which record is the correct record it is referencing.

Aggregate functions in calculations are also an issue, ie List/Count/Sum and so on. These require all referenced records they are listing/summing/counting to be downloaded to the client.

[Jack Rodgers]

Speed will vary from what you get on a single user computer with the files (the fastest) to a lan network to a hosted file over the network. The hosted file is going to be the slowest and if it is a shared host there could be another 100 or so files being hosted and accessed at the same time which is way slow.

You might consider a situation where you have a dedicated server with no one else using it.

Also, it depends upon how your host performs from bottom basement stuff to megagigabyte connections.

And then there is your own connection, what speed are you connecting to the internet? You can do a speed test to find out. If you are only getting low performance from your connection, you can't do much until you get a faster connection.

Next is platform. Windows IT guys know how to bring Filemaker to its knees since they know nothing about how to set up the conections.

Plus, you may have designed slowness into your system, see the first statement. If it runs slow on your one computer, it ain't gonna get faster over the internet.

Which brings us to the computers you are using. Are they new super fast ones or older ones begging for retirement.

All in all your question lacks enough specifics to provoke only the most knee jerk reactions.

[Weetbicks]

Next is platform. Windows IT guys know how to bring Filemaker to its knees since they know nothing about how to set up the conections.

Can you elaborate on this? Are you referring to how to setup the Database settings in the admin console? Or are there other OS level things that should be optimized if running FM server?