Clipper 5 Slow on W2K

[SimonBray]

Seeing as how I know a lot of this forum is into Clipper, can anyone tell me how to resolve the issue with Clipper 5 apps running really slowly on Windows 2000. I have read various reports that indicate that it is something to with the way Windows flushes cache buffers. The brilliant response from a Micorosft Technician I read was that in all previous MS operating systems (so we^re talking DOS, Win 3.1, W95 and poss Win98 and WinME) the flushing of cache buffers was not handled correctly and that since Win 2000 MS have done us all a favour and fixed the problem. MS say that the problem with poor performance obviously lies with the makers of the programming language who are failing to handle the flushing of cache buffers corectly - probbaly because when they wrote the language it didn^t exist !! This I suppose also goes for Novell Netware (all versions) which have no performance problems.____Anyway that still leaves me with a Clipper app that is almost unseable in certain areas (other parts run at normal speed).____Anyone have the solution ?? I have to live with this app for at least another year.____Regards,__Simon Bray.

[Randal_(Guest)]

Simon,____Is the app slow or is printing slow? Have you tried posting your question to the clipper newsgroup? There is a registry setting you can make to stop NT type caching. Do a search for CachedOpenLimit.____Regards,__Randal______>Seeing as how I know a lot of this forum is into Clipper, __>can anyone tell me how to resolve the issue with Clipper 5 __>apps running really slowly on Windows 2000. I have read __>various reports that indicate that it is something to with __>the way Windows flushes cache buffers. The brilliant __>response from a Micorosft Technician I read was that in all __>previous MS operating systems (so we^re talking DOS, Win __>3.1, W95 and poss Win98 and WinME) the flushing of cache __>buffers was not handled correctly and that since Win 2000 MS __>have done us all a favour and fixed the problem. MS say that __>the problem with poor performance obviously lies with the __>makers of the programming language who are failing to handle __>the flushing of cache buffers corectly - probbaly because __>when they wrote the language it didn^t exist !! This I __>suppose also goes for Novell Netware (all versions) which __>have no performance problems. __>__>Anyway that still leaves me with a Clipper app that is __>almost unseable in certain areas (other parts run at normal __>speed). __>__>Anyone have the solution ?? I have to live with this app for __>at least another year. __>__>Regards, __>Simon Bray. __

[Simon_Bray_(Guest)]

Thanks - Do you have a url for a Clipper Forum ?

[Randal_(Guest)]

>Thanks - Do you have a url for a Clipper Forum ? ____comp.lang.clipper____Randal

[Cliff_Wiernik]

Clipper 5.2e applicates running on local Win2000/XP hard drive are slow if the dbcommit()/COMMIT commands are used to force a flushing of disk cache buffers to harddisk. This is slow by a factor of 10-20 times.____I was testing an update of a file locally and I knew this problem existed and when the commit was removed, it went as fast as on the novell network.

[John_Lewis_(Guest)]

Hi Cliff,____In a VO app which is simply a data conversion process, I replaced all my calls to COMMIT() with Skip(0). The increase in performance was nothing short of incredible. The process time changed from 1041 secs to 4 secs flat. I really was gobsmacked!____Ever since my Clipper days I have alwas had it impressed upon me the importance of using a COMMIT to ensure data integrity, but perhaps with the moder OS we can simply do away with this.____Any comments would be appreciated____Regards__John

[John_Lewis_(Guest)]

I use Visual Objects and the performance is even worse under Windows XP. One of the major factors is the disk format. If you are using NTFS and not FAT32, the performance hit is huge. You can prove this yourself if you have access to a dual booting PC, with Windows 98 and XP or 2K. Try testing a process which takes a couple of minutes to run and is readinf and writing to your DBF tables. I have seen a process go from 3min 27secs tp 16min 04secs under such a test.____Buy Partition Magic and create a FAT32 partition for your data, also remember to have cluster sizes at least 4K.____Hope this helps____John