In a replication process update files are created every 15 minutes on a
server. These files are copied to a local store from time to time.

Since these downloads seemed to be very slow, I tried to download the
same files via FTP. Here the results:

EDB Copy (just copy, not reading the updates):
174 files ~1 MB total = 95 sec <--
1 files ~ 3 MB total = 8 sec

FTP:
174 files ~1 MB total = 11 sec <--
1 files ~ 3 MB total = 7 sec

What can be the reason for that?

BTW: Merging update files to one file was discussed earlier - to have
that as an option would really help a lot.

Thanks Uli

Uli

Have you tried working with the compression options on the files?

When you create a remote store there is an option to add compression 0..9, with 0 as the default.

Try ALTERing the stores and raising compression levels and see whether this helps.

My guess would be that the FTP is already optimizing the transfer by compressing at each end, while EDB is not yet, but might perform better if the stores are reconfigured.

Adam,

> Have you tried working with the compression options on the files?

Thanks. Since the 3 MB file takes about the same time, I didn't think
about compression, but I'll give it a try.

Uli

Adam,

> Have you tried working with the compression options on the files?

Doesn't change anything.

Uli

Correction: it's even much slower than before; I guess compressing of
many small files takes too much time.

Uli

Ouch!

If file transfer during an update process is the only issue it is probably worth building an EDB.dll which uses your own FTP code, and call this from an EDB stored procedure.

It is not too much work to write EDB.dll's in Delphi, but I know it is an extra piece of work.

Perhaps you could ask Tim why it is so slow. It might be that there is a good reason, such as checking the state of the database or something.

Adam,

> If file transfer during an update process is the only issue it is probably worth building an EDB.dll which uses your own FTP code, and call this from an EDB stored procedure.

Yes, that's a good idea as a workaround.

> Perhaps you could ask Tim why it is so slow. It might be that there
is a good reason, such as checking the state of the database or something.

Hopefully he will read this post.

Thanks Uli

Adam,

just to let you know: I wrote a module which zips/unzips all update
files of a store. That works fine and the result is very fast.

Regards Uli

>just to let you know: I wrote a module which zips/unzips all update
>files of a store. That works fine and the result is very fast.

Hi Uli,
could you provide a simple example please ? It would be very useful to me and I believe to many others.
Thanks in advance
Alex

Alexza,

> could you provide a simple example please ? It would be very useful to me and I believe to many others.

Sure, I uploaded the project in the binaries.

Uli