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

[Mark Phillips]

On Jul 17, 2005, at 12:44 PM, Edward Hillenbrand wrote:

> On Jul 15, 2005, at 7:51 AM, revDAVE wrote:
>
>> Test 2: loop 1 to 20000 in filemaker 6...
>>
>>  activity Monitor = 96.5% CPU
>
> As a software developer this is unbelievable. If I'm understanding you 
> correctly, your essentially telling FileMaker to count and do nothing 
> during each iteration.  Right?
>
> I wrote a program similar to yours in C to speed test my system.  On 
> any modern system it should complete almost instantly.  On my single 
> processor 1 Ghz G4 counting to 20000 and doing nothing takes 0.000544 
> seconds.  This is so fast that the program doesn't even show up in 
> Activity Monitor.  If I do something like output some text during the 
> loop then the program uses about 1% of the CPU. So, either FileMaker 
> is unbelievably slow (someone said that had already been established) 
> or I've misunderstood you.

I am feeling feisty today so... Comparing a c/c++ program to something 
like FileMaker isn't a fair comparison. C vs Pascal works; FileMaker vs 
4th Dimension works too. While your remark is enlightening, it is a bit 
like comparing the speed test of a quark and that of a minivan.

Given the very high level of FileMaker "zero programming" scripting, I 
suggest a better test would involve activities typical of the business 
application of the software. Say, create 20,000 invoice records, modify 
each of them, then delete them all one by one. Run this on the target 
systems and see how you do.

Happy days,

  - Mark