[FX.php List] fx.php website speed issues

[Troy Meyers]

Dennis,

Another big impact on speed, possibly the worst, is if there are outdated file references.

If the database files were developed on another machine, or are FM files that have been around for a while, the file references from the old situations may be stored. In my case this cause extreme speed problems when I first switched.

Because my files have been around for years, migrating upward from FileMaker 2 (before it was even called Pro) the files have secretly collected a long list of file paths in computers that I no longer even have. Starting with FMS 7 or 8, certainly 9, instead of the files being opened once when the web server starts, the files needed have to be located and opened each time a query is made. If your list of file paths that a database has relations to contains a long list of outmoded, non-valid paths, each of the bad path attempts has to time-out before the next candidate is tried. This is VERY time consuming, and it happens for each page access that has any related files tied in.

So, if your files are at all a "legacy", check this out:

Assuming you are using FileMaker Pro 9, open a file that you use on the web that has relationships with other files, and go to the File > Manage > External Data Sources... item.

This will bring up a list of file references for your relationships and other external things like script references.

Select one of the file references and hit Edit. You'll see a list of file paths that will be checked in order to get the related file. Unless the first entry is valid and the simplest and most direct, you'll be getting delays while the listed paths are tried and failed. Assuming all the files are together on the same server, the simples file path should be something like:

file:Subscribers.fp7

Before I cleaned out my file references, I might have a whole chain of bad paths that FileMaker had kept track of through the years, like:

file:/StarMax HD/Applications/FileMaker Pro 4.0 Folder/Web/flasking/Flasking Databases/Subscribers
file:/Performa/Applications/FileMaker Pro 6.0 Folder/Web/flasking/Flasking Databases/Subscribers
file:Subscribers

In that case, the two nonexistent machines were hunted for on the network, before the good reference was tried, resulting in long, long, delays, like 30 seconds to a minute, each time a page was loaded.

Check this out in ALL your files, and all your file references.

-Troy