LC server experience return anyone ?

[Richard Gaskin]

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
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