Thanks Geoff

My machines are windows 2000 (Ok), Windows XP SP2 (AMD Fine, P4 very
slow), Windows 2003 server (Xenon, extremely slow).

I will try setting the Affinity on the P4 machine here and see if this
helps. I am using Firebird 1.5.1.4481 Super Server. Watching the
processing activity in task manager shows large periods of in activity
followed by small bursts of processing. If it is Firebird, as you say I
will repost to the firebird support email.

Cheers
Rob


Geoff Worboys wrote:

> > The common theme appears to be p4 CPUs causing problems.
> > The P4 3000 does not have hyperthreading enabled (I will
> > check this further) so probably the issue is not related
> > to this. The Pump is using Ib-Cursors for source and Dest
> > and is contained in its own transaction for each table.
> > The performance lag occurs during the Ib_Datapump.execute
> > method.
>
> > Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
>
> I've seen this before - with XP and hyperthreading enabled.
>
> If this is the same problem I've seen then...
>
> Its not IBO - its Firebird and possibly XP. (What
> operating systems are you running?)
>
> (Its nothing to do with cursors etc, even BLR based
> transfers are effected - DBak uses BLR, so I've seen it)
>
> Appropriate CPU affinity can help (matching the two
> logical processors than exist on the same physical), but
> does not resolve the problem completely
>
> The problem only occurs on network based (even if they
> are localhost) connections, true local connections appear
> to work fine.
>
> If you watch the transfer in progress you will see that
> it seems occur in bursts with big pauses in between.
> Perhaps this symptom varies with the size of the row
> (eg with images or large blobs perhaps the pause may
> occur on every row).
>
> Other activity from additional connections sometimes
> seems to "wake up" the transfer when it is paused.
>
> I have a Win2K system here with dual CPUs that does not
> have any problem (with default affinity settings). My XP
> system is also dual (physical) CPU - so four logical) and
> the problem varies considerably from table to table.
>
> Marco Lauria and myself spent considerable time trying to
> isolate the problem but even after applying various XP
> hotfixes the problem continues. I've since upgraded to
> XP SP2 and the problem still exists - although most of the
> time it does not effect me very much.
>
> Marco did post a message (Sep 2003) to the FB support list
> but did not get much response.
>
> The network aspect of the problem makes me wonder whether
> it may be worth playing with some of FB config settings,
> but I have not had time to try.
>
> You did not mention what version of FB. My experience with
> the problem described above is that it has existed since
> at least FB 0.9.4 (probably earlier) and still exists in
> FB 1.5.2.
>
> If you want to compare notes further let me know.
>
> --
> Geoff Worboys
> Telesis Computing
>

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