Enhancement to DYNACHEK to permit Estimate of Benefit of Network Block Fetch Optimisation. - E4000024 - 22 February 2000

The DYNACHEK program gives you the option of enabling or disabling the use of block fetches when checking a database. You can use this facility to estimate an upper bound for the performance improvement possible by using the network block fetch optimisation as follows:

1. Load DP4 networking on a client with the block fetch optimisation enabled (i.e. without specifying -noblock)
2. Run the new version of DYNACHEK available from this page option against a reasonably sized copy of your database, and enable the following options: Check all tables; Skip Base Dictionary Tables; Quick Check Only, Disable the Allow Block Fetches option. Then run the Integreity Check. If this takes to long to complete, then instead check one table that has a signficant amount of data in it, preferably a table with many small records rather than fewer large records.
3. Unload DP4 networking, and then reload it using the -noblock command tail to disable the optimisation.
4. Repeat the DYNACHEK tests using the same options and note the new time.
5. The difference in times is a measure of the maximum benefit you are gaining from the use of the block fetch optimisation. You may like to try the same test with block fetch enables in DYNACHEK itself. This indicates the potential benefits to C program of using the bf_() or blk_() family of functions to read the database, QAB programmers should note that the bf_() functions are always used for handling windows and pop-up lists in QAB, though not for batch access to a table.

The new verison of DYNACHEK is required for this to work, because this version uses "ordinary" database reads when block fetch is disabled, which are optimised by the network requester. The old version used block fetches of one record when block fetching is disabled, and these are not optimised.

DP4 Version Compatibility

Beta software is supplied without warranty and should not be used in live sites without the agreement of Itim Technology Solutions. Compatibility with an eventual final release cannot be guaranteed.

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