Performance core principles: Introduction to the project

nicklightbody
Wed, 10 Mar 2021 01:23:11 +0000
NickLightbody's

Performance is a concern of every FileMaker developer, it is the most complained about subject but also the less discussed. We plan to assemble the wisdom and experience of our community here in order to develop and publish the Core Principles of FileMaker Performance.

Thank you to @Cecile & @Malcolm for enabling us to undertake this project.
Nick Lightbody 10th March 2021

FILEMAKER PERFORMANCE: CORE PRINCIPLES

TABLE OF CONTENTS

How can I understand more about how FileMaker works and how to get the best out of it performance and user experience wise?

1. UNSTORED CALCULATIONS
When are unstored Calcs useful and when should they be avoided?

2. INDEXING
What effect does indexing have on Performance? Why would you want to reduce it? How can you design to reduce indexing?

3. RELATIONSHIPS
What effect do relationships have on performance and what are the alternatives? What are examples of performant and non-performant relationship graph designs?

4. TABLE WIDTHS
What effect do wide tables (tables with many fields) have on performance? How can you reduce table widths? Where do repeating fields fit in?

5. PREDICATES
What are the performance implications of how you create relationship predicates, how many you use and their order?

6. STARTUP
How can you improve the user experience by designing a fast startup into your solution?

7. SCREEN REDRAWING
What is the effect on performance of windows, lists and portals redrawing and what is the effect of using freeze? When is it useful to use a blank layout within a scripted process and how does it effect performance?

8. EXECUTESQL
What are the performance implications of using ExecuteSQL? When should you use this and how should you use it properly?

9. DATA IMPORTS
How do you ensure that data imports run as fast as possible?

10. SCRIPTING
How do I write fast and easy to maintain scripts to automate my solution?

11. TRANSACTIONS
What are Transactions and how and when should I consider using them? What is good practice in designing a Transactions feature?

12. PLUGINS

Which plugins can enhance FileMaker performance without thereby introducing dependencies which create maintenance issues in the future and how should be best use those plugins?

13. MISCELLANEOUS

If you cannot find the right place for something about base / core / vanilla FileMaker performance and performance related Plugins please create your reply here and have your say.

POLL

Help! I have closed this until it’s setup correctly.
I want to offer 3 votes out of 12 subject areas. So in FM terms I want to permit 3 checkboxes from a list of 12 - ideally showing text labels for each of the 12 - can someone show me how to do it or do it themselves? Thanks!

Which three areas of focus on FileMaker Performance do you regard as the most important?

Please use the Numbers of the 12 main sections above - thank you!

Please use the Numbers of the 12 main sections above - thank you!

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Click to view the poll.

12 posts - 3 participants