Why does the BOS FileMaker system seem to be running slowly?

There are many issues which can contribute to poor performance on the BOS FileMaker system and with the rapid scale of growth at Buildcert, the FileMaker server now has more concurrent users, more records, and more calculation fields than ever before. Every time a new user, a new job or a new feature is added, it puts more a little more strain on the system resources.

The original version of BOS was designed and developed to handle a small team of users. The developer at the time likely had no way of understanding the future requirements for BOS to be designed and optimised in order to scale effectively with the volume of users, job records and calculated fields that it handles today.

Our developers are currently doing their best to retroactively apply optimisation techniques and strategies in order to improve the stability and efficiency of the system. However it can sometimes feel like an uphill battle as more users, more records and more calculated fields are added to the system on a daily basis.

Here's a slightly more detailed explanation of why these factors negatively impact performance.

Concurrent users

FileMaker Server allocates system resources to handle each user's requests and maintain their connections. As the number of concurrent users increases, the server's resources get divided among them, potentially causing a strain on CPU, memory, and network bandwidth. If the server's capacity is exceeded, response times can become slower, and users may experience delays or even timeouts when accessing the database.

Millions of records

A larger number of records in a database can impact performance, especially when performing searches, sorting, or filtering operations. Retrieving and manipulating data from a larger dataset requires more processing power and disk I/O, which can slow down performance. Additionally, if indexes are not appropriately utilized or maintained, searches can become slower as the database needs to scan through a larger number of records.

Calculation fields

Calculation fields are computed in real-time based on predefined formulas and can impact performance, particularly if they are complex or rely on related data. When a record is accessed or modified, FileMaker Server must calculate the values for all relevant calculation fields, which can consume additional processing power and time. As the number of calculation fields increases or their complexity grows, the server's performance can be negatively affected.

It's important to note that FileMaker Server is designed to handle concurrent access and large datasets efficiently. However, the impact on performance becomes more pronounced as the number of users, records, and calculation fields increases.