27 replies to this topic

[jonathon]

Inasmuch as e-Sword performance has been mentioned a couple of times over the last few days, the following might be useful:

How long e Sword takes to start depends on several factors:

• How much RAM the systems has;
• How many programs are running in the background;
• How many resources one has;
• What anti-malware software is running;
• How many fonts are installed¹;
• How the hard drive is connected to the computer;
• AMD chips provide better e Sword performance than Intel chips².
• Free disk space;

• The more RAM that one has installed, the faster e Sword will start;
• The more programs that are running in, the longer e Sword takes to start;
• The more resources one has, the longer e Sword takes to start;
• Anti-malware that looks at each read, and/or each write operation, will significantly slow down e Sword;
• Drives that have USB connections are considerably slower than drives with SATA connections;
• Using resources on a CD or a DVD will negatively impact e Sword performance;
• For optimal system performance, Windows requires at least 25% of the disc partition to be free;
• For optimal system performance, Windows requires at least 25% of the disc drive to be empty³;
• Linux requires the swap partition to be at least four times the size of System RAM⁴;

1 On my Linux box, with 180 000 fonts installed, e Sword 9.7.2 takes roughly 25 minutes to start. With 4 000 installed fonts, e Sword 9.7.2 takes roughly 1 minute to start. I do not know if the same effect occurs on Windows.

2 If the specifications for the AMD chip are 25% less than those of the Intel chip, the AMD chip provides equal performance. If the AMD chips specifications are less than 25% of the Intel chip, then the AMD chip provides better performance than the Intel chip.

3 This is in addition to the percentage of free space on each partition.

4 The usefulness of this has been questioned. The Linux kernel still expects to find a swap partition of this size.

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The issue that both I and Vaugn have run into, is "too many resources". My recomendation is for no more than 500 resources of all types. I obviously don't follow my own recomendation on this point.

jonathon

[Vaughn]

In other words, your performance will vary depending on a lot of things and because each user is different, performance of e-Sword will be different.

[Ebed Doulos]

Which can be said for almost every program out there. It is a marvel to me that programmers can make software that works the way it should for the vast majority of people.

[APsit190]

Which can be said for almost every program out there. It is a marvel to me that programmers can make software that works the way it should for the vast majority of people.

Hi Ebed,
Its not really that difficult to do providing the programmer sticks to two cardinal rules.

• KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)
• WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get)

If programmers just stick to these two basic principles, the outcome for the user will be a great experience, and its this, which I believe, Rick Meyers has done with e-Sword.

Oh yeah, I nearly forgot; there is a third one, and one which we programmers tend to be fighting a loosing battle on: Eliminate any risk of user error which would cause the program to crash. That one is perhaps the most difficult out.

Blessings,

Edited by APsit190, 08 February 2012 - 06:03 PM.

[jonathon]

• How many resources one has;

I appear to have mislaid my specifications for e-Sword 9.x.
I'll have to spend some time playing with e-Sword 10.0.7 to determine the hard limits.

The following should provide any idea of how many resources are too many.

85.2: SQLite File Limits
When SQLite was first created, the only limitation was a 2^32 bit limit imposed by the hardware of that time¹. Since then, the limits have been radically decreased --- usually as security enhancements.

The following are the maximum limits for SQLite 3.1.6:

• The limits listed here apply only if the following are true:
• SQLITE_MAX_LENGTH = 1,000,000,00;
• SQLITE_MAX_COLUMN = 2,000²;
• SQLITE_MAX_FUNCTION_ARG = 100³;
• SQLITE_MAX_EXPR_DEPTH = 1,000⁴;
• SQLITE_MAX_LIKE_PATTERN_LENGTH = 50,000 bytes;
• SQLITE_MAX_VARIABLE_NUMBER = 999;
• SQLITE_MAX_ATTACHED = 10⁵;
• SQLITE_MAX_PAGE_SIZE = 32,768;
• SQLITE_MAX_PAGE_COUNT = 1,073,741,823;

• Database table⁶:2³² (?)
• Number of characters in a table name: Platform dependent;
• Number of characters in a field name: Platform dependent;
• Number of fields in a table: 2³², 2^32, 4,294,967,296⁷;
• Number of open tables: Program dependent: 2¹⁶ (?);

• Table size:
• Number of characters in a field: 1,000,000,00;
• Maximum size of a BLOB: 2,147,483,647 bytes;
• Maximum size of a string: 2,147,483,647 bytes

• Number of indexes in a table: Program dependent;
• Number of fields in an index: Program dependent;
• Number of characters in a validation message: Program dependent;
• Number of characters in a validation rule: Program dependent;

• Number of characters in a table or field description: Program dependent;
• Maximum size of a record: 1 Megabyte⁸;

• Number of characters in a field property setting: Program dependent;

• Database:
• File size: 2 Terrabytes⁹;

• Number of objects in a database: Program dependent;
• Modules: Program dependent;
• Number of characters in an object name: Program dependent;

• Number of characters in a password: Implementation dependent;

• Number of characters in a user name or group name: Program dependent;
• Number of concurrent users: Program dependent;

• Other:
• Number of open tables: Program dependent;

• Maximum number of records: 2³², 2^32, 4,294,967,296^{10 11};

• The limitations in SQLite databases are dependent upon the tool used to read/write the database;
• Limitations within e Sword will be added, when, and as they become known;
  
• The largest "functional" e Sword resource I've seen was 500 MB in size;
• The most resources I've had in a running e Sword instance has been circa 15K;

85.3: Limitations within e Sword
At roughly 500 installed resources (Bibles, Dictionaries, Commentaries) e Sword 9.0.1 performance becomes somewhat sluggish.

At roughly 5,000 installed resources (Bibles, Dictionaries, Commentaries) e Sword 9.8.3 will freeze up, when switching between resources. The duration of the system freeze depends upon how much RAM is available to e Sword.

e Sword can be a resource hog. If you don’t need a resource, don’t keep it in a folder that e Sword can access.

1 Since source code is available, it is theoretically possible to rewrite that code so that the only limit is the 2^128 bit limit imposed by bleeding edge hardware.

2 A compile time option enables this to be set as large as 3267.

3 A compile time option enables this to be set to 127.

4 A compile time option enables this to be set to 0, thereby putting no limits on the size.

5 A compile time option enables this to be set to 30.

6 Most limitations are dependent upon the program used to access the database.

7 This is three different ways of representing the same number.

8 A compile time option enables this to be set to 16 megabytes.

9 Most POSIX compliant back ends have a 2 GB limit.

10 You will probably max out the size of the database, before maxing out on the number of records.

11 This is three different ways of representing the same number.


jonathon

[katt5365]

To speed up E Sword on my pc, I just deleted unintentional duplicate or unused resources (after making a backup should I need to use them in the future) especially the Audio Bible. Helped a lot. And I still have a backup in case I want to go back to one particular resource.)

[MJ_]

This is an interesting topic. I have seen a little lag in my esword loading recently but I also have a number of resources of every sort that I am spoiled with and prefer to keep. The extra load time is not a problem as it is typically much less than a minute.
One of the things that I have seen is a lag while using the editors. I find that while working in editors that there are lags when I click my cursor location to different lines, or into and around different words I see lags of 5 seconds or more at times. usually when I see that happening and I am going to continue to edit and move around in a file I will go to my commentary and my dictionary windows and turn off the linking. That seems to help. Not sure if anyone else sees this kind of thing or not. Would be interested in your feedback if you have seen similar things.

Mj

Edited by Michel Scr, 08 March 2012 - 08:43 AM.

[DoctorDaveT]

eSword loves RAM. If you have a relatively low cost option to add some, you will notice an increase in speed. Dictionaries in particular slow eSword down, as well as the editors.

[APsit190]

Well, I've got the max amount of RAM my PC can take (1GB), running Windows XP Home. When I bought the PC it only had 256MB of RAM. I have just over 2GB of e-Sword resources, and it takes about 1.5 minutes for e-Sword to load. I could take off half the Bibles, Commentaries, and Dicts, and etc, and that would certainly take some of the pressure off e-Sword and make it a bit faster.

But then again, I can't be bothered doing that as I dunno when I'm going to need a particular resource, so I keep everything on and don't whinge about my e-Sword running slow. Anyway, its good fun having all that stuff on there and seeing e-Sword slogging its guts out.

See, in many respects I'm just lazy about switching modules around and streamlining them to those that I regularly use. Not only that, e-Sword looks kind of naked without all the modules I have on it. Well, that's my excuse anyway.

Blessings,

[MJ_]

eSword loves RAM. If you have a relatively low cost option to add some, you will notice an increase in speed. Dictionaries in particular slow eSword down, as well as the editors.

Thanks for your replay to my message. I had a couple of questions in regards to what you wrote if you have this knowledge I would be interested in knowing more in regards to the following response.

My resource monitor is telling me that I am using 60% of available ram with esword open. I have 2GB available. Obviously the amount of memory will change as other applications open. I am curious how much more memory esword is going to reach for as I work and move around in the editors, open up different bible modules etc..
Or another question, with 60% used and 40% available is (esword) it limiiting itself in some way?

Kind regards,
Mj