Multi-user

[harry ganz]

I have the new version of Multi-user. It started well, but unfortunately, does not seem to be able to cope with a large database. The main machine is fine, but the newtorked pc's cannot cope. As the orders etc have increased, so the progarmme on the network has slowed to a crawl. It takes 6 minutes to print a packing list and invoice. We are using fast machines with plenty of RAM, and have compacted the databases, but nothing has helped. Anyone got any ideas?
(I know that we can deleted the database, but we refer to old orders quite often, and it is not convenient to archive them)

Harry Ganz
harry@garden.co.uk

[I-CC]

What network speeds are you running at? Typically it will be a combination of the PCs, data being passed and how fast the network is running for the transfer of the information from one device to another.

[harry ganz]

it is a 1000mbps network

[I-CC]

K, and are you NICs in the PCs concerned with this poor performance 10/100/1000 auto sensing, i.e. the NICs are rated to take advantage of the speed available on your network as most out-of-the-box PCs are straight 10/100 and in some 'bad cases - very bad cases' a 10 alone....

Another thing to check might be your cables (straigh thru and cross over) and whether your switch/hub etc can auto manage these types of cables and....

Last of all, are your cables connecting this all up GbitE rated.

If all of these checkout and are correct and the bottleneck is not in the network over which this is all connecting, then only other thing could suggest is checking the network settings to see if you have duplicates of settings maybe within the settings which is confusing things, i.e. tries one set of settings which might be flawed (maybe) which is causing the lag and time whilst it tries to connect, which when that fails it then tries an alternate route which is good and gets your information through.

Are you using fixed IPs within your DMZ or dynamic allocated with expiry delays DHCP?

Some ideas I hopes.

[James M SellerDeck]

Hi Harry

With regards to amount of orders you have in the database on the main machine, it may be worth while removing the orders and archiving them, which should hopefully make the order processing a bit speedier on the other networked machines.

As Multi-user allows multiple sites under the same licence, you could export a snapshot from the current site, and import it to another new licensed site e.g. 2005-Q1, making sure you check the box 'Overwrite orders in target installation' - this would give you a copy of the main site with all the orders, which can act as an order archive.

Then delete the old orders from the main site, you can repeat this process every time you reached a certain amount of orders, or maybe at specific date intervals (i.e. every quarter) when creating these archive sites.

For safety you should also disable upload/download in the archived sites.

Hope that helps