Download State of The Company

Best Practice for Performance
Edward M. Kwang
President
Ways to Improve Performance
• Reference to article on http://www.elliott.com/kb
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 7.13.316 will
default to 4K.
– Use Rebuild utility to change from 1K to 4K.
Demo Rebuild Database
• Find article on http://www.elliott.com with
keyword “Performance”
• Find article on http://www.elliott.com/kb 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
Questions & Answers