Form is slow on Windows XP, fine on Windows 7

[Juniper]

About two and a half weeks ago my organization upgraded from Alpha Five version 8 to version 10.5. We've had plenty of bugs to work out of our application since that change, but have managed to fix or find work-arounds for most of them. However, this one's got me stumped:

One of the most important forms in our application displays names & addresses of individuals, then has 10 browses (on various tabs) displaying their orders/invoices, various types of donations, registrations in various events, etc. All of the browses are read only--data entry is done via dialogs or other forms. It's a rather large set and could have been somewhat better normalized, but it's been running well since version 5 the way it is. When we upgraded to version 10, we had to re-build each of the 10 embedded browses in order for the application to even run. Since then things have been running well--but only on our machines that run Windows 7.

On our XP machines, it takes literally 3 or 4 seconds to fetch a new customer in the form regardless of the current index (or lack thereof). When entering invoices (on a completely different form--we do use a browse for data entry there), it's likewise 3-6 seconds between hitting ctrl+enter on one line and when the next line is available to type in.

We currently have five win XP machines and three win 7 machines that use the database. All three Win 7 machines run the form beautifully. Four out of the five XP machines choke--and I didn't bother testing the fifth. I don't think it's a hardware related difference, but for the sake of comparison:

Computer #1--Way too slow:
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.0GHz)
3GB RAM
Gb ethernet
Network optimized database
Windows XP Pro 32-bit

Computer #2--Just great:
Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 (2.9GHz)
3GB RAM
Gb ethernet
Network optimized database
Windows 7 Pro 32-bit

Both computers are connected to the same Gb network switch. The real database files reside on another Core 2 Duo Win 7 machine on the same Gigabit switch. Currently we only have 3 users on the database at any given time, although it is usually open on five different workstations at once.

Ok, sorry for such a long post, but I figured I may as well give all the info up front. So here's the bottom line: Why such a performance hit under XP? Any suggestions on how to remedy the problem?

Thanks in advance!
~Jason

[Clunes]

Re: Form is slow on Windows XP, fine on Windows 7

Food for thought.

Have you compcated the tables, rebuilt the indexes etc? Have you tested with only one machine open at a time. Do they all share the same default network printer, if so try to have local printer attached and try then. I have found that sometimes printers can be the a big reason for slowdowns

[Juniper]

Re: Form is slow on Windows XP, fine on Windows 7

Hi, Mark,

Yes, we've compacted the entire database a few times, as well as just the specific set(s) that are giving us trouble, in the process of trying to debug things. The issue persists.

Likewise we've tried with only one copy of the database open, without any change.

I'll have to tinker with the printer settings tomorrow when I'm back in the office. None of the machines tested had locally attached printers. For our primary reports, labels, and letters, the printer is overridden in X-basic at print time. But you're suggesting that the Windows default printer could affect Alpha's performance even when we're not so much as thinking of spooling a print job? Intriguingly bizarre.

Thanks for the thoughts, will post more in the morning.

~Jason

[Clunes]

Re: Form is slow on Windows XP, fine on Windows 7

My thoughts on the printer related to an another program I once used called Lotus Approach. I found that forms were controlled in size by the default printer. when on a network, different local default printers settings had a massive impact on time. I don't think Alpha has this issue (maybe for reports), but it is something to look at.

When you say 'Network optimized database' Do you mean you are using the shadow process. I don't use that at all and don't have any network issues (touch wood)

[Juniper]

Re: Form is slow on Windows XP, fine on Windows 7

Yes, we do use shadowing, (some of our layouts load much more quickly that way), but we've also experienced this issue while accessing the database over the network without the shadow.

That's an interesting "feature" in Lotus...I think if Alpha had that issue it would have shown up six years ago when we were running this app on a 100Mbps network. But it's at least worth a quick test...

Thanks again,
~Jason

[DaveM]

Re: Form is slow on Windows XP, fine on Windows 7

I again, Love the shadowed becaus the information for the for, report, etc are all kept on the work station. Each to his own I guess. The problem should only show up in a report, label etc.
You could open the form(s) in design mode and specify a different printer? or maybe click off show printer?? Worth a shot? Never heard of a printer causing something like this.

Are there any old version 5 code still left around? when going from v3 to v5 and then v7 I had no problems, but v10 showed some areas that needed help.

[Juniper]

Re: Form is slow on Windows XP, fine on Windows 7

Ok, changing the windows default printer didn't help. I didn't actually change the printer settings for the form, but it was already set to "use default printer," so changing the default printer should have affected it if the issue is the same as the one in Lotus Approach...

As far as old version 5 code...well, there probably is. I haven't checked every last event on the form (there's only 65 buttons...) but no code that executes when loading the form or fetching new records is outdated...in fact, there's hardly anything there at all. Could old code on buttons that haven't been clicked still choke things?

One more bit of info: I failed to mention last night that when we've packed the database, it has sped the XP machines up to an acceptable performance level--until we modify the data in the set. Performance almost instantly degrades at that point--but again, only, only on the XP machines. The Win 7 machines continue like nothing happened. It doesn't seem to matter which computer does the modification, or which OS it's running. It just doesn't work. The most sensitive table seems to be our invoice lineitems table. We've tried disabling Xbasic field rules on the table, but that doesn't change things either.

Another shot-in-the-dark tidbit: Towards the end of the day yesterday, I made a couple tiny tweaks to the form in question (like changing the onInit event to set the primary index to something more useful than record number order), and copied the files the form is defined in from our development copy to the live database. The files copied were mainapp.set/.sex/.sem. I noted (tho I wish I had paid a little more attention) that one or two of the files I copied were actually smaller than the ones that I was overwriting! Neither copy of the DB had been packed since the last set of changes had been copied over, so I can't think of any reason that the live files should have been larger than the development files...any clues? any connection to our problem? The size difference was not very great (not enough to make a network transfer difference), but after the smaller files were copied, the XP machine I tested navigated the set quickly. By morning it didn't. The size of the files I copied last night hasn't changed--yet. However, we do have some posting operations that run overnight, and I noted that at the exact same time that they were running, "mailing list.ddm" and "mailing list.ddd" were modified. "Mailing List" is the head table of mainapp.set, which is the set my problematic form is in. One of the posting ops posts to a field in that table...but why did it modify the ddm/ddd files?? Don't know if there's actually a connection between these file modifications and the performance issues, but I thought I'd throw it out there for whatever it's worth.

Thanks for your help & suggestions,
~Jason

[DaveM]

Re: Form is slow on Windows XP, fine on Windows 7

I have never heard of those typ files growng, but then I never really thought to look. Did you tweaks remain in place???
Would it be possible to take a look at your indexes as written?

When I moved up, a couple of problems showed in the indexes and old code that just did not like the new environment. I did not have to rebuild any forms as I recall, but sure had some work to do. When I opened up reports, I had to resave them in the new version and take care of the old code.

[Juniper]

Re: Form is slow on Windows XP, fine on Windows 7

I have attached an empty copy of the head table of the set. I guess that's the simplest way to give you the index defs? There are several indexes in there that we never use, which my colleague tells me were added automatically as he built the application years ago. Since they were auto-added, I've been hesitant to delete them...I'd welcome your opinion.

Yes, the tweaks remained.

[Clunes]

Re: Form is slow on Windows XP, fine on Windows 7

You probably looked at this but is every machine on the same patch version?

[DaveM]

Re: Form is slow on Windows XP, fine on Windows 7

I will leave this for some others opinion, but my question is: why do you need all these? It appears you are trying to do stuff with indexing that be more efficiently done in other ways and does not involve an index. I did learn something; did not know soudex would work in an index!

I also noticed this one table has 106 operations. I would suspect these do a bunch of different stuff. Do any of them run as a form is opened?

Address	     ADDRESS1+ZIP	 	                           Ascending	All	
Alltrim	     ALLTRIM(LASTNAME)+FIRSTNAME	 	Ascending	All	
City	     TRIM(CITY)+STATE	 	             Ascending	All	
Company	     COMPANY	 	                           Ascending	All	
Country	     TRIM(COUNTRY)+FOREIGNZIP	 	Ascending	All	
Country1	      COUNTRY	 	                          Ascending	All	
Customer_Id  CUSTOMER_ID	 	              Ascending	All	
Dupcheck	     SOUNDEX(LASTNAME)+SOUNDEX(FIRSTNAME)	Ascending	All	
Email	     EMAIL_ADDRESS	 	                            Ascending	All	
Lastname     TRIM(LASTNAME)+FIRSTNAME	Ascending	All	
Lastname1    LASTNAME+FIRSTNAME	 	Ascending	All	
Lastname2    LASTNAME+FIRSTNAME+ZIP	 	Ascending	All	
Phone	     HOMEPHONE	 	                           Ascending	All	
Sdx_Name    SDX_LNAME+SDX_FNAME	 	Ascending	All	
State	     STATE+CITY	 	                           Ascending	All	
Trim	     TRIM(LASTNAME)+TRIM(FIRSTNAME)	 	Ascending	All	
Zip_Code	     ZIP+TRIM(LASTNAME)+FIRSTNAME	 	Ascending	All

[martinwcole]

Re: Form is slow on Windows XP, fine on Windows 7

what server are you running on - 2003 or 2008?

what knid of virus software are you running on the machines

provided that there are not enough differences in the hardware of the xp and 7 machines to account for the difference, I would look at permission settings and virus software issues. There is no good reason for it to run faster on w7 than xp, all things being equal.

look at the network card settings, too.

[Juniper]

Re: Form is slow on Windows XP, fine on Windows 7

Mark,

Yes, they're all the same patch, except that yesterday I patched one of the XP machines with the Visual Studio 10 build to see if it made a difference. I had no idea there was a VS10 build until I saw Chet Sapino's thread about trouble installing it. The new build didn't seem to make a diff, so I didn't try other machines.

Dave,

Roughly half of those indices were built automatically by A5--I assume they were constructed for the purpose of LQO or something? I think one or two of them were built when this table was added to a different set than the one it's head of as well. I don't really know myself...up until now, I've focused on developing/maintaining a different segment of the database and left this part to my colleague, who's been developing this application since the Alpha Four days. He's stuck working on some other pressing projects, so I'm commissioned to solve the problems with this form. I'm a little reluctant to just start deleting things and see what breaks since the Win 7 machines run so well, and the XP machines ran so well under V8...If there are any particular indices that you think are suspect, say on! I'd be glad to see what I can do...

Martin,

Our "server" is actually just another Win 7 Pro 32 PC. I'm out of the office this morning, so I can't give you the exact specs, but I know it's a Core 2 Duo @ ~3GHz with ~3GB RAM. As far as anti-virus, we currently use BitDefender (though I doubt we'll renew once our three-year subscription is up) on all our machines. We did notice some recommendations on other threads here to check for AV interference--so we tested with the AV completely turned off, with no improvement. For permissions, I suppose with Win 7 Pro the permissions aren't quite as fine-grained as Win Server '08 or something, but we have all the user accounts from each PC set up on the "server" in the same user group, and have individually given them full permissions to the drive the database lives on, as well as given the group as a whole the same permissions...

I'll take a closer look at the network card settings when I get into the office this afternoon.

Could the fact that we're using a Win 7 PC as the "server" be an issue? The demand on the PC hasn't seemed to be a problem (my colleague uses it for his daily workstation and rarely if ever notices the database traffic), but maybe the OS just doesn't play nice as a server? Strange that it didn't show up till V10.5 if that's the case tho...

Thanks to all for the time and tips!
~Jason

[martinwcole]

Re: Form is slow on Windows XP, fine on Windows 7

I'm also using a W7 32 bit with 4Gig memory as a "server" for testing purposes. And I have a 10-1000 network. While I don't recall the specifics, I do recall that maybe 2 years ago when I got it, adding it to my all-XP's network was a pain.

When I am testing shadow adbs it runs fine.

A client with a 2008 server and about 23 mixed worstations (XP and & 7,) on a 10-1000 network: Some of the XP's run faster than some of the 7's, and some of the 7's run faster than the XP's. I've never been able to figure out why. But, the XP's did NOT slow down by adding the 7's.

[Juniper]

Re: Form is slow on Windows XP, fine on Windows 7

Glad to hear that somebody else uses a Win 7 machine for a file server. Yeah, I remember adding our first Win 7 machine to the network too...the network discovery/homegroup stuff really got in the way. Seems like we had a master browser issue too, if I remember right...but that was over a year ago.

For the record, I checked settings on the NICs of the two "benchmark" machines I mentioned in the first post. The Win 7 machine had a few more options than the XP box did, but for the options they shared, the settings were identical except for a VLAN setting was disabled on the XP box and enabled on the W7 one. I enabled, but nothing changed... Both were integrated Realtek adapters.

~Jason