Hi Andre I agree with your comments on the appropriateness of the tests. I’ll give some thought to incorporating more I/O based tests.
Do you think that having FastCGI support so that LiveCode could be run behind a load balancing server would be an improvement from a scalability point of view. Regards Peter > On 24 Nov 2014, at 23:42, Andre Garzia <an...@andregarzia.com> wrote: > > Hi Peter, > > Thanks for your testing! > > I think we're approaching this performance issue wrong. Most webapps will > be I/O bound and not CPU bound. Calculations are not the most common thing > going on but I/O in the sense of reading and writing from database and > files are. Also the only way to deal with structured data in memory in a > straight forward way is LiveCode multilevel arrays but there is no built-in > way to serialize these arrays for consumption outside of LiveCode. For > example, a common thing these days is to have your client-side HTML5 code > calling back your server-side code for more information which is normally > presented in JSON but LiveCode has no built-in function for JSON encoding > and decoding, so both operations happen in pure transcript (or whatever > they are calling it these days) which will make it really slow. > > If we want LiveCode to have better performance we need ways to improve I/O. > Things that would be good and have a real impact out of the box: > > - JSON and XML encode and decode functions in the engine. > - Non-blocking DB routines > > > A different issue is scalability. Right now, LiveCode Server works in CGI > mode which is very straight forward but it is not the most scalable thing > under the sun. When I say scale, I am not saying things such as serving > 5.000 users. Serving a couple thousand users is easy. I am saying serving > some hundred thousand users with complex server side logic, afterall doing > 100.000 hello worlds is easy. > > PHP is going thru lots of revolutions in the form of the Facebook > initiatives such as "hack" (new PHP variation), that VM they created and > the little compiler they created which I forgot the name. The PHP > developers are also pushing PHPNG and other gizmos. Even current generation > PHP is not usually server with CGI technology. > > Ruby, Node, Python, Clojure, Java, none are served with CGI. Most of them > could be used as CGI but no one is using them this way. CGI is easy but it > is not scalable. Imagine that if you were serving 10.000 concurrent > requests on your little server farm, you're have a collection of 10.000 > LiveCode server processes between your servers. > > What we need is something like Python WSGI or a non-blocking engine such as > Node. Then we could with a simple pool of couple LiveCode engine instances > serve a lot of people. > > On Mon, Nov 24, 2014 at 1:33 AM, Peter W A Wood <peterwaw...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> In a previous email Richard Gaskin, the LiveCode Community Manager, wrote >> "Given the role of memory and performance for scaling, if we want to see LC >> Server taken seriously as a professional server tool we need to identify >> and eliminate any significant performance difference between it and PHP.” >> >> I thought that it would be worth spending a little time to compare the >> speed of LiveCode against the speed of PHP. I came up with a test based >> loosely on Carl Sassenrath’s Rebol Speed Script ( >> http://www.rebol.com/cgi-bin/blog.r?view=0506 ). I have found it a useful >> base for writing comparative scripts (either comparing languages on a >> single machine or comparing machines using a single language). It is far >> from perfect in a multi-tasking environment but I believe provides decent >> comparative data. >> >> I have attached two scripts, speedtest.lc and speedtest.php. I’m sure >> that both could be improved significantly and welcome such improvements. >> The results of running the two scripts on my machine, LiveCode 7.0.0-rc-3 >> and PHP 5.5.14 are: >> >> Schulz:LiveCodeServer peter$ ./speedtest.lc >> LiveCode Speed Test Started >> The CPU test took: 2851 ms >> The Memory test took: 3656 ms >> The File System test took: 1975 ms >> LiveCode Speed Test Finished >> >> Schulz:LiveCodeServer peter$ ./speedtest.php >> PHP Speed Test Started >> The CPU test took: 3921 ms >> The Memory test took: 1200 ms >> The File System test took: 666 ms >> PHP Speed Test Finished >> >> So it seems the LiveCode has the edge on PHP when it comes to calculations >> but not on memory access or file access. >> >> The memory test relies on using arrays, I'm not sure if that is the best >> way to test memory access. >> >> Regards >> >> Peter >> >> Speedtest.lc >> >> #!livecode >> >> if the platform = "MacOS" then >> set the outputLineEndings to "lf" >> end if >> >> put "LiveCode Speed Test Started" & return >> >> ##cpu test >> put the millisecs into tStart >> repeat with i = 1 to 10000000 >> put sqrt(exp(i)) into tTemp >> end repeat >> put the millisecs into tEnd >> put "The CPU test took: " && tEnd - tStart && "ms" & return >> >> ##Memory Access >> put the millisecs into tStart >> repeat with i = 1 to 1000000 >> put random(255) into tMem[i] >> end repeat >> put the millisecs into tEnd >> put "The Memory test took: " && tEnd - tStart && "ms" & return >> >> ##Filesystem >> open file "test.tmp" >> put the millisecs into tStart >> repeat with i = 1 to 100000 >> write "This is a test of the write speed" && random(255) to file >> "test.tmp" >> read from file "test.tmp" for 1 line >> end repeat >> put the millisecs into tEnd >> put "The File System test took:" && tEnd - tStart && "ms" & return >> delete file "test.tmp" >> >> ##Finish >> put "LiveCode Speed Test Finished" & return >> >> Speedtest.php >> >> #!/usr/bin/php >> >> <?php >> >> print "PHP Speed Test Started\n"; >> >> //cpu test >> $start = microtime(true); >> for( $i = 0; $i < 10000000; $i++ ) { >> $temp = sqrt(exp($i)); >> } >> $end = microtime(true); >> $time = ($end - $start) * 1000 + 0.5; >> printf("The CPU test took: %5.0f ms\n", $time); >> >> //Memory Access >> $start = microtime(true); >> for( $i = 0; $i < 1000000; $i++ ) { >> $mem[i] = rand(0, 255); >> } >> $end = microtime(true); >> $time = ($end - $start) * 1000 + 0.5; >> printf("The Memory test took: %5.0f ms\n", $time); >> >> //Filesystem >> $file = fopen("test.tmp", "w+"); >> $start = microtime(true); >> for( $i = 0; $i < 100000; $i++ ) { >> rewind($file); >> fwrite($file, "This is a test of the write speed".rand(0,255)); >> fread($file, 34); >> } >> $end = microtime(true); >> $time = ($end - $start) * 1000 + 0.5; >> printf("The File System test took: %5.0f ms\n", $time); >> unlink("test.tmp"); >> >> //Finish >> print "PHP Speed Test Finished\n"; >> >> ?> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> use-livecode mailing list >> use-livecode@lists.runrev.com >> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your >> subscription preferences: >> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode > > > > > -- > http://www.andregarzia.com -- All We Do Is Code. > http://fon.nu -- minimalist url shortening service. > _______________________________________________ > use-livecode mailing list > use-livecode@lists.runrev.com > Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription > preferences: > http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
