Art,

Why don't you create a SP which does all your tests and then returns a
"configuration" string. That way all these tests could be done in a
single request.

Now if your looking for even more significant performance improvements,
consider moving some of your application functions into a
middle-tier/application server. This will require some re-engineering,
but the benefits are considerable.


Sean

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Art Metz [mailto:ametz@...]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2001 6:17 PM
> To: 'interbase@...'; 'ib-support@egroups.com'
> Cc: Todd Parker
> Subject: [ib-support] excessive network traffic [LONG]
>
>
> I am seeing what appears to be excessively many packets going
> between client
> and server. Details follow.
>
> I'm supporting a legacy app written with Delphi 3, BDE,
> InterBase 5.6. It
> needs to query a database created by a different app. It
> connects to a
> remote database over a modem using TCP/IP.
>
> For various reasons, different versions of App2 have
> different database
> schemas. App1 must support all the different versions. So,
> after opening
> the database, App1 queries some system tables to determine if
> certain fields
> and tables are present.
>
> The problem that I'm having is that the connection over a 56k modem is
> noticeably s-l-o-w. One of the network guys put a sniffer on
> the connection
> to determine just what the traffic was. Here are some examples of the
> dialog. I'm not bothering to uppercase names in literals.
>
> 1. // does a certain field exist?
> select rdb$field_name, rdb$relation_name from rdb$relations
> where (rdb$field_name = 'archive_24')
> and (rdb$relation_name = 'alarminfo')
>
> returns 1518+1518+1246+150 (=5950) bytes
>
> 2. // a query on a single-row table
> select realsite_id from alarminfo
>
> returns 1518+1518+1246 (=5800) bytes
>
> 3. // does a certain table exist?
> select * from rdb$relations where
> rdb$relation_name = 'mon1_camera'
>
> returns 1518+1518+1246 (=5800) bytes
>
> 4. // Is this query generated by the BDE?
> select rdb$owner_name, rdb$relation_name, rdb$system_flag,
> rdb$view_blr, rdb$relation_id from rdb$relations
> where rdb$relation_name = 'alarminfo'
>
> returns 1518+1518+1518+1246+170+
> 1518+1518+1518+1246+
> 1518+1518+1518+1450
> (=17774) bytes
>
> The "stuttering" of the value 1518 makes me wonder if the BDE
> (or possibly
> gds32) is attempting a query; timing out; and then
> re-sending. OTOH, the
> client doesn't resend. Could the server be looking for an ACK and
> re-sending if one doesn't come through?
>
> 5. I have other queries (you know, the kind that actually
> gets data to
> work with) that get sent up to four times in succession.
> This looks to be a
> true timeout/resend sequence.
>
> My point (and I do have one!) and questions are:
>
> a. This traffic seems excessive. Do you agree?
> b. Where does it originate: bde? gds32? tcp/ip?
> c. Would I get less traffic if I switched to IBObjects?
> d. How can I reduce it?
>
> Any suggestions or pointers will be greatly appreciated.
>
>
> Art Metz
> AMetz@...
>
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>
>
>