Thanks

David

Please refer to the AyaNova v3 Manual section "Performance Optimization" starting on page 564 which identifies a number of things to look out for that can hamper performance.

If a large amount of data is being displayed, I can see there be a slight wait time (i.e viewing the Service Workorders grid that displays all workorders ever made with no filters set) - but you state you get an actual count of 5 to 15 seconds just opening a memo - which itself is a very small piece of data. Therefore that would more likely point to an issue with a bottleneck occurring between the computer making the request to the server, which than responds with the requested data.

In addition to refering to the Performance Optimization section of the AyaNova v3 Manual, it would be suggested to determine where the bottleneck is occurring by identifying whether occurs only at networked computers, only at a specific networked computer, or at the server itself.

Here are some things to check:

- Any anti-virus program should not be set to scan the AyaNova database.

- if using the network Firebird configuration, ensure hyperthreading is not enabled in the BIOS 

 - is performance like this on the actual server itself, or only you are experiencing this on networked computers? Perform the exact same steps on the server (count off times) and compare with the exact same steps on different networked computers.

- you might have cabling issues, or a NIC or hub is causing unneccesary chatter - requiring network packets to be resent numereous times between the server and networked computers.

- The server may be overloaded and therefore requests for data are queued - what else is running on the server that is using up resources?

- Check the server's performance - is there low availalable memory, is there a constant high CPU usage?

- If using the network Firebird configuration, is the AyaNova.exe.config on the networked computers using the server's IP address or the server's name? Compare speed using one versus the other.

These are just a few to look into to identify where the actual bottleneck is occurring.

- Joyce

AyaNova Sales & Technical Support

http://www.ayanova.com

Hi David, just a couple of points I wanted to make sure we're clear after reading your post:

Yes that system is, on paper anyway, more than fast enough to run AyaNova.  The slowest system we tested on here is a classic Pentium 2 450mhz with 1gb of ram.  It's our baseline system for testing performance on older hardware and AyaNova on it performs way faster than what you describe on that system.  You have a serious bottleneck somewhere there. 

Opening a memo should be a split second operation on a local area network.  The service work order form is the slowest of any of the forms in AyaNova to open because it has hundreds of controls on it that are selectively displayed or not depending on the type of work order and what you click on as you go through it, but even it should load in much less than 1 second.

Hopefully the troubleshooting steps in the manual that Joyce directed you to will reveal the problem on that count.

The other thing I wanted to make sure was clear is that a notification is not sent immediately when you do an operation in AyaNova that generates a notification.  Notifications are created immediately in a waiting table in the database and every 5 minutes the notification processor checks that table and processes accordingly. 

On the other end of the notification, if a user is using a popup type notification to receive on in AyaNova it's also polled about every 5 minutes.

So in theory there can be up to a 10 minute delay between the moment a new notification is generated and the moment it pops up in AyaNova.

The polling delay at the receiving end only applies to popups in AyaNova, if you were to send an SMS notification (for example) then it would pop up on their cell phone or pager as quickly as the cell company takes to process the notification email when they receive it.

The reason there is a 5 minute polling interval in the notification sending process (Generator) is because it's more efficient to do them in batches.  If they are done immediately there is a tremendous potential load put on the whole system be it the database, the email server etc.

The same goes for the popups, every time AyaNova checks for popups it's not able to do anything else for that split second it takes, so if it checked too often you would see a delay in responsiveness within AyaNova itself as you are using it.

On a side note: I was woundering if it would be possible to make the panes editable. What i mean is when you click to view the service workorder pane and you select all of the columns you would like to view is there a way so that i could edit some or all of those records without having to actualy open the work order? This would be especialy helpful when it came to making minor changes to things like active items, or onsite labor and would be a work around to some of the performance issues associated with opening the amount of data associated with a work order.

Thank You

David

No doubt, that's way below the normal time, normally there is a delay but it's the kind that you notice it being just a fraction slower to load a workorder form than another type of form.  By delay I'm still talking split seconds here, way too short to even time it by hand really.

Yes, absolutely this is a serious problem and almost certainly the cause of the slowdown.  The very instant you touch the paging file everything is going to basically come to a halt.  If Firebird (or any database server for that matter) can't deliver from a ram cache then it's going to be painfully slow.  I have never seen Firebird use more than 50mb of ram for even the largest AyaNova databases we tested here.  Is that machine a dedicated server or is someone using it as a workstation?  Is something else memory intensive running on it?  1gb should be plenty for Firebird hosting an AyaNova database.  Open the task manager and just double check how much ram everything is using.

Be sure to profile it's memory usage, then reboot it completely and profile it again to see if it's a problem that creeps up or is ongoing right from the start.

The fact that it's slow for everyone on the network points directly at the server and any shortage of memory that causes even the slightest dip into hard drive page file is an absolute no no for a server of any kind.

I'm not confident this will make any difference, you already have plenty of ram for Firebird hosting AyaNova, unless you have some other apps that have to run on it that consume a tremendous amount of memory.  It's very odd, we have whole web servers with SQL server on them that are using less memory than that.  I wouldn't put any more ram into it until you pick through and find out why it's using so much to begin with, task manager will give you a good general start on that process.

In our testing SQL server is only slightly faster than Firebird and the slowness you are seeing is not at all typical, SQL server uses a *LOT* more ram than Firebird so I'm guessing it will be even slower.

When it's running as fast as it should be you wouldn't notice this to be an issue at all.  A typical AyaNova 3 with a database server of any kind should be literally keeping up with you as fast as you can click on things to change them.  Once you get the speed issue sorted out I'm guessing this won't be an issue for you at all.

Thanks

David

As you say AyaNova itself is only using about 25MB of memory - whereas everything else is just pounding that computer's resources. 

You do not need a "server" operating system or a computer that is classified as a "server"