[comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc] Clipper and PC-NFS

nx00699@dsac.dla.mil (Gene McManus) (10/18/90)

I need some information/help concerning the way Clipper accesses
dBaseIII files. We are experiencing some interesting effects when the
files being accessed are remote mounted onto a Unix system
(Gould/Encore 9050 and/or NP-1, both BSD4.3 based). When records of
some 250 bytes are being accessed, we see some 400K bytes of LAN
traffic. (Yeah, that's right!).

We at first guessed that Clipper was buffering to all available
memory (on the PC), and transferring buffers full, which would have
been in the 300K size range. We made a few adjustments to attempt to reduce
available memory, but didn't see a significant change in the amount of
network traffic for each request.

Now I'm guessing, but here's my latest thought: Perhaps Clipper does
track-at-a-time I/O, bypassing DOS/BIOS disk I/O for performance
(assuming that it's running on a PC), and the pcnfsd server on the Unix
boxes do a simulation of track-at-a-time that results in huge amounts
of network traffic for relatively trivial records. Does this make any sense?

Any other ideas or help would be welcomed. We have an application that
will likely have to be yanked out by the roots and redesigned because
of the network load it produces, but we'd like to get a handle on the
'why'.

Thanx...
Gene




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Gene McManus @ DLA Systems Automation Center, DSAC-X
               Columbus, OH 43215 (614) 238-9403,    Autovon 850-
Internet:      gmcmanus@dsac.dla.mil  (131.78.1.1)
UUCP:          {uunet!gould,cbosgd!osu-cis}!dsacg1!gmcmanus

  #define PI  3.141592653589793 /* makes changes easy should
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The views expressed are my own, not those of the Agency, or the DoD
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