Atrex Performance - Versions 10 and Older

The performance of Atrex across is entirely dependent upon the hardware and operating system involved.  As Atrex is a data intensive application, performance problems of any component of the computer, operating system, or the network can have a big impact on the performance of Atrex.

The following are some suggestions on steps that you can take or items that you can look at in order to improve the Atrex performance.

All Installations:

• Run the "Options - Batch Processing" function from the main Atrex menu with the default options selected.  This verify tables option of this function will ensure that all of the required indexes are present, and the optimization option of this function physically reorders the data tables to the most commonly used record sequences to allow for maximum performance.  Please note that you will need exclusive access to the database for this function.
  
  
• Defragment the hard drive where your Atrex data is located.  This will reduce the amount of time it takes for the operating system to locate the Atrex data on the hard drive.  If you are running a multi-user license of Atrex, run the defragmentation on the workstations AND the server computer.  
  
  
• If you are running anti-virus or anti-spyware software, make sure that it is configured NOT to scan .dbf, .dbt, and .mdx files.  Scanning the data files across the network will severely degrade the performance of Atrex.  This exclusion must be configured on ALL systems accessing the data, including the server if you are running a multi-user installation.  Please refer to the documentation of your anti-virus or anti-spyware software for assistance on making these changes.
  
  
• Clean out the Windows temporary directory on the local system.  Since a large amount of data is can be stored temporarily on the local drive during normal operation, cleaning out the Windows temporary folder can improve performance.   Please refer to the Windows help on how to clear out your temporary files.
  
  
• Check the amount of free memory on your system.  Press Ctrl-Alt-Del and then display the Task Manager.  From there, click on the "Performance" tab.  If you have less than 25% of your physical memory available or the page file usage is approaching 100%, Windows will swap out memory to the hard drive as it retrieves information from the database.  This will severely degrade the performance of Atrex.
  
  
• Check Task Manager processes to see if there are any other applications that are taking up excessive CPU usage and "starving" Atrex of CPU time.  An example of this is having a large Word document open with the automatic spell and syntax checking running.  This operation can slow down other applications within the system, especially those that require significant drive access such as Atrex.

Multi-User Installations:

• If you are currently running a 10MB network, switching to a 100MB network is a cost effective way of improving the performance of Atrex.  A 100MB network will provide 7 times the data throughput of a 10MB network and make a huge difference in the performance of Atrex.  
  
  
• Make sure that the ONLY network protocol loaded on the systems is TCP/IP. Multiple protocols on the network can slow it down considerably, especially if the systems on the network are set to use different default protocols.
  
  
• If you have determined that the performance of Atrex is being limited by the performance of your network, upgrading to version 12 or higher will provide the option of a client/server configuration.  In this configuration, most of the data access is done at the server with only the relevant results being sent back to the workstation.  This can significantly improve the performance of Atrex in a environment with a slow network.