Atrex Performance

The performance of Atrex is heavily 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.  The 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 in order to run the batch processing.
   
• 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.  While not as important on the local workstations, it can help with the performance of saving locally cached data and settings.
   
• 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 windows 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, or displaying video from multiple security cameras.  This operation can slow down other applications within the system, especially those that require significant drive access such as Atrex. 
   
• Store your Atrex data on a SSD (solid state drive).  SSD drives compared to standard hard drives can provide a huge improvement in performance.
   
• If you are running anti-virus or anti-spyware software, make sure that it is configured to exclude scanning .EDBTbl, .EDBBlb, and .EDBIdx.  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.
   
• If you are running drive cleaning software such as CCleaner on the server computer, make sure that this program is set to only run after hours as it can dramatically reduce the performance of the server while it is running.

Multi-User Installations:

• If you have a multi-user configuration and are running a Windows based server, reconfigure your Atrex installation to use a client/server setup for data access on the server.  This will significantly reduce the amount of data sent across the network and will push a large portion of the data selection to the server system which can retrieve it much faster than the workstation can.  In addition to the performance boost that can accompany a client/server setup, the data is much better protected against damage if a workstation shuts down incorrectly.
   
   For instructions on how to set up Atrex for Client/Server, press F1 from the main Atrex window and then click on the link for "Network/Multi-User Setup".

• If you have a large serialized inventory table, or you are using Atrex across a WAN, Atrex 22 has several performance improvements that will help significantly in these environments.