[X4U] OT - Unscientific Speed Test - PC-Mac-FileMaker

[Edward Hillenbrand]

On Jul 18, 2005, at 7:43 AM, revDAVE wrote:

>  However, based on your e-mail, did little bit of testing ...  And  
> I created
> the exact same test, however this time I change the field type from  
> a normal
> numeric field type to a global numeric field type ( which resides  
> outside of
> individual records ... And I thought might be faster...) and in  
> fact the
> exact same test now took 4 seconds to complete rather than 19  
> seconds...  So
> I guess that normal record  type must have some kind of special  
> overhead to
> deal with...
>
>  I find that somewhat interesting ... Do you? ... Not as good is C 
> + ... But
> better...

I'm not a FileMaker user, so I can only take a guess.  But could it  
be that FileMaker is saving the record when the value of the field  
changes?  This would explain why it takes so long to count, as  
writing to a disk is among the slowest operations a computer can do.   
This could also explain why the Fujitsu won, it probably had the  
fastest hard drive.  And Mike already said it was likely the speed of  
the hard drive.

Conversely, the global numeric field type probably is memory resident  
only and is never written to the disk.  Which means it would be my  
choice for any temporary value, like a loop counter.

Though, take this with a grain of salt, as I'm definitely not a  
FileMaker expert.  Still this is all fascinating.