--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Svein Erling Tysvær wrote:

>
> >Hi, I have a customer with FB 1.56 sitting on SBS 2008 std and mostly xp clients. In certain areas of
> >the program where activity is heaviest (server side procedures are being run to calculate the data) it
> >takes over 5 minutes to complete the process. I have put their fdb on my system and do not have the
> >same issue. At first I thought this pointed to an issue on their network but then they told me that if
> >they run a backup and restore there is no issue with delays and it runs fine; however, over the period
> >of a day the speed degrades back to the 5 minutes plus for the function to complete. If they back up
> >and restore all is initially well again - but again things degrade over the period of the day. If
> >anyone can tell me what is occurring and how to fix it I would be most grateful.
>
> Check database statistics. A database that runs slower and slower is often due to programs not taking proper care of transactions. Firebird stores versions of records, so if there is an old transaction (any transaction except those that are both read only and read committed), there could be several versions of the same record, leading to slower and slower performance.
>
> Fixing such a problem could involve anything from asking a person to log out at night, to rewriting an entire system that was created without thinking of transactions at all.
>
> Set
>

Thanks Svein, I will re-check all the transactions but am careful to start and commit transactions. This isn't a general problem with the program, it seems to be isolated to this user. Something you said did strike a chord though. This user does tend to have users that use terminal server to access the system. If they are not logging out of TS could this be a potential cause?