[FX.php List] FM Scripts vs. PHP

[Joel Shapiro]

Thanks for the response Kevin.

Lance did in fact wonder if was pre-7 systems that led to the belief  
that FM scripts needed to complete before the server could continue  
with other processing, but said that in regards to FM7+ that belief  
is "completely wrong".

I don't think Lance could be considered "the horse's mouth" per se,  
but this was discussed in the official FMI webinar -- with him being  
"the expert".

I agree that it's nice to keep everything in PHP, and although I'd  
used an FM script in my first project, I've done everything in PHP  
since then.  It's interesting, though, if that's not so important.

Anybody else care to pipe in?

-Joel


On Oct 24, 2007, at 4:43 PM, Kevin Futter wrote:

> On 25/10/07 4:29 AM, "Joel Shapiro" <jsfmp at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> Hi all
>>
>> Looking for people's thoughts and experiences here.
>>
>> In the FM PHP API webinar a couple weeks ago, Lance pushed the idea
>> of running FM scripts from the PHP.
>>
>> I know some people on this list have often said that it's preferable
>> to do everything in PHP if possible.  Now I'm wondering why.  Have
>> you seen degraded performance when running FM scripts?  Have you seen
>> instability?  Are you PHP purists?  Do you know something that others
>> don't know?
>>
>> I asked Lance about how running FM scripts would affect performance,
>> and he said running FM scripts is often no bigger a load on the
>> server than processing solely through PHP, and that sometimes it can
>> be faster.
>>
>> Also, I had understood from this group (perhaps mistakenly) that the
>> server puts other incoming hits 'on hold' while processing FM
>> scripts, but Lance said that in fact you can even run additional FM
>> scripts while one FM script is still executing.
>>
>> Does whether or not the WPE is on the same machine as FMServer make
>> any difference here?
>>
>> Anybody have an opinion? ;-)
>>
>> TIA,
>> -Joel
>
> I've always got an opinion. ;-)
>
> My apprehension about running FM scripts from the web harks back to  
> FMUv6,
> when it definitely wasn't a good idea. However, many of the issues  
> that made
> it so *seem* to have been fixed since then (single-threaded  
> execution for
> example), but I haven't seen anything in black-and-white from the  
> horse's
> mouth about it.
>
> Since many of our databases need to be simultaneously accessible  
> from the
> web and internal FM clients, we had concerns about data sync and  
> integrity,
> but these were tied to the limitations in transaction processing that
> earlier versions possessed, so this is probably no longer an issue  
> either.
>
> Since we've moved to Server Advanced v8 and upgraded to better  
> hardware,
> reliability and performance have gone through the roof. I guess the  
> relative
> performance hits of PHP vs FM scripts depend on the respective  
> hardware
> they're running on, the network relationship they share, and how  
> busy each
> is.
>
> I'd say for us, our FM server is far busier than our web server, so  
> running
> as much of the web-related FM data processing on PHP as possible  
> would be
> more beneficial for us than if it were the other way around.
>
> Having said all that, I have on a couple of occasions needed to  
> preprocess
> data in FM via scripts before sending it to the web, and it would  
> have been
> far more difficult to do in PHP alone. I still can't get past the  
> feeling
> that it 'feels wrong' however, as it just doesn't seem like a clean  
> data
> processing model to me.
>
> Kev
>
> -- 
> Kevin Futter
> Webmaster, St. Bernard's College
> http://www.sbc.melb.catholic.edu.au/
>
>
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