LC server experience return anyone ?
Richard Gaskin
ambassador at fourthworld.com
Mon Aug 19 09:47:23 EDT 2013
jbv wrote:
> Several years ago (before on-rev was available) I had a similar setup
> using a metacard engine. Things were fine, although we experienced a
> couple of problems :
> - communication between the engine and mySQL was quite slow, especially
> with large amounts of data, and I found out that I'd better ask mySQL to
> write the results of a SELECT command as a file and then read the file in
> a mc script
> - at times the engine would choke mainly because of memory overhead on
> heavy tasks.
>
> I guess several people on this list are using LC server on their own
> servers, so I'd welcome any useful advice on the best path to follow...
I've used both LC Server and LiveCode-based Linux standalones as CGIs on
shared servers, VPSes, and dedicated servers.
Performance has been very good overall, though I should note that I have
yet to use MySQL with LC Server in a production environment.
To a (likely very) small degree, some of the slowdown may be related to
the overhead inherent in the externals API. Going from Apache to LC to
the externals to the drivers to the MySQL server and back again means a
fair bit of overhead.
However, while I haven't done any benchmarking on that my hunch is that
the overhead there is minor.
It seems far more likely that any noticeable lag comes from the load of
other users, either on the web server itself or the MySQL server
(assuming that the On-Rev uses a separate server for the DB as most
shared hosts do).
Before dropping $100/mo on a dedicated server, it may be worthwhile
testing performance on a VPS, which is generally much cheaper (VPSes
start as low as $6/mo at InterServer.com).
Most VPS implementations won't give you the performance of a dedicated
machine, but for testing that's useful because if you see good
performance in a VPS you know it's going to be that much faster in a
dedicated server.
The one thing a VPS will provide is a more thorough job of isolating
your processes from others', which can be helpful for identifying
bottlenecks.
Perhaps even better would be to set up a test server in your office,
using any PC you have lying around unused. Installing Ubuntu Server
takes only a few minutes; you'll likely spend more time configuring your
Apache config files for the LC CGI (time leveraged when you later move
to a production machine).
I use a small-form-factor barebones here as a local test server, which
is cheap to buy, easy to add RAM and HD/SSD, and allows me to test
everything completely independently of external network latency and of
course other users.
It's also been a great way to learn about basic server admin tasks, and
it's always a joy to review the logs to find what a great job Ubuntu's
default firewall does with rejecting the many spambot attacks every
server gets all day long. :)
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World
LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/FourthWorldSys
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