Best Practice for Performance Edward M. Kwang President

Ways to Improve Performance Reference to article on and search on keyword “Performance” –Client Server –Hardware –Operating System –Database –Elliott Application Software

Btrieve vs. SQL Btrieve –Pro: Transaction –Con: Report SQL –Pro: Report –Con: Transaction

How Btrieve Work It’s Record Manager Retrieve One Record At A Time Fast With Transaction Operation (Record by Record) Since There’s Very Little Overhead with Btrieve Engine

How SQL Work It’s Relational Database Engine Client Issue SQL Statement to Server –Select Cus_No, Cus_Name, Cus_St From ARCUSFIL Where Cus_St = ‘CA’ Server Compile The Statement And Decide The Best Way to Retrieve the Data The Data Is Retrieved And Send Back to Client

Performance Improvement The amount of improvement by using SQL for report process range from a few times to more than 10 times: It’s usually determined by three factors: –Network speed: Less improvement with faster network I.e. Big gain if you use 10-BaseT and less gain if you use Giga-Bit Ethernet –Server speed: More improvement with faster server –CPU, Memory and Hard Disk (RAID) –The nature of the report

SQL Is Faster With Report In the Previous Example, SQL will –scan through the table of ARCUSFIL and pick out those customers that CUS_ST = ‘CA’. This is done on the server –return three columns of customers in ‘CA’ back to client which reduce network traffic. Vs. Btrieve will –Scan through the table of ARCUSFIL on the client side –Get entire record of customer, even though it only need three columns

Btrieve Is Faster With Trx For Record by Record Type of Operation, Btrieve is Faster Because It Does Not Have the Added Layer to Slow It Down. Example of Transaction Processing: –Order Entry –Cash Receipt –New A/P Trx Entry –Inventory Trx Processing

Elliott And Crystal Report Elliott Work At Btrieve Level (Transactional) The Future Direction of Elliott Report is Crystal If We Use Crystal Report at The SQL level, then we have –“The Best of Both Worlds” Pervasive’s Slogan

Client Server Crystal Report Writer –Use ODBC instead of Database Files –It’s SQL vs. Btrieve –Make no difference if DB is small key is readily available All Data Need to Return to Client for Processing Elliott –Running Elliott on Workstation –Running Elliott on Server Defer Process on Server –Faster Report Processing –Less Chance of Data Corruption for Posting

Hardware RAID-5 –At least 3 drives to give capacity of 2 drives. Three disk heads to retrieve data is faster than one disk head. –Typical Implementation is 5 drives. CPU –CPU Speed –Multiple CPUs Memory –1 Giga or higher is recommended Network Speed, 10 vs 100 vs 1000 –Switch vs. Hub

Operating System Use Same Hardware Configuration –Windows NT vs. Netware 3.12 Windows NT is about 50% faster –Windows 2000 vs. Windows NT Windows 2000 is about 50% faster PSQL Support –PSQL has better support on Windows NT/2000 Test based on Netcellent in-house environment. We have not tested Netware 4, 5 or 6 to make fair comparison available.

Database PSQL 2000 is significantly faster than PSQL 7 or Btrieve V6.1x According to our initial test - PSQL 8 deploy client side caching and result in about 50% performance improvement with most reports. Database page size –1K page size was the default in Elliott. –4K is recommended (result in 50% - 100% performance improvements because less disk IO). –New Elliott databases created after will default to 4K. –Use Rebuild utility to change from 1K to 4K.

Demo Rebuild Database Find article on with keyword “Performance” Find article on with keyword “Rebuild” How do you know if you should do a rebuild? –Use BUTIL –STAT ARCUSFIL.BTR to find page size Run Rebuild utility provided by Pervasive. –Select Files –Change to 4K Size in Options Window –Start Rebuild

Elliott Application Software Purge Your Data –Purge COP Posted Orders –Purge I/M Inventory Trx Audit Trails –Purge Distribution Files –Purge AR and AP Open Item Files Do Not Purge These Files (Sales Analysis) –COP History Trx File (CPHSTTRX) –COP Invoice History Files

Posting in Elliott V7 vs. V6.x Elliott V6.7x use two phases posting in COP –DOS support up to 30 files open simultaneously –COP posting require more than 30 files –Divided into two phases so each phase won’t exceed 30 files. Elliott V7 use one phase posting in COP –Windows has no limitation on number of open files. –Posting speed is about 50% faster than V6.x.

Case Study 1 A customer in Omaha, NB upgrade from Netware 3.12 to Win2000. They are disappointed that there’s not much performance improvement. –Network: 10-BaseT –Server: High End Windows 2000 Server –Aging Report: 5 Minutes –POST COP Invoices: 1 Hour 30 Minutes Solution: run reports and posting on server –Aging Report: 10 Seconds –Post COP Invoices: 4 Minutes

Performance Demo Run A/R Aging Report –Run on Workstation –Run on Windows 2000 Server Why we did not achieve 30 times factor? –10 Base-T vs. 100 Base-T –Hardware (3K vs. 10K investment) What if we have 1000 Base-T network? –Less performance improvement when run on server –Still benefit with more reliable data update

Case Study 2 A customer in southern California upgrade from Macola V6.70 to Elliott V7.1 –Netware 3.12 Server -> Windows 2000 Server –Database Page Size 1K -> 4K –Old COP Posting – Average 1 hr or more –New COP Posting (on server) – 1 min

Analysis Netware 3.12 vs. Windows 2000 – factor 2 Elliott V6.70 vs. V7.1 – factor 1.5 Page size 1K vs. 4K – factor 2 Faster Hardware – factor 2 –Disk Array & 10K RPM –CPU Speed (2 Giga vs. 512Mhz) –Memory (1 Giga vs. 512 Meg) Posting on the server – factor 2 to 30 Combined Factor 24 to 360 –Depend on where is the bottle neck –Most of the time, bottle neck is the network speed –When posting on the server, the bottle neck is shifted to the server CPU, RAID-Controller, Hard Drive, Memory…etc.

Formulating A Strategy Use Windows 2000 Server Run Heavy Duty Jobs on Server Directly –Faster –Reliable & Less Chance of Data Corruption –Take Advantage of Defer Processing –Can’t do this with Netware Use ODBC with Crystal –Performance with Client Server –Ease of Use with Views –Security Purge Your Elliott Data

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