Desktop icons

[NewsArchive]

Friedrich,

My update installs are kind of slow on some computers. While their
internet seems fast enough, I have a bunch of icons that I install and
that is what seems to take so long... bigger files download fairly quick
and install.

Do you have some hints to speed this up? Will NOT overwriting icons
speed it up? And I read somewhere that you could cause everything to
download at once then install?

Thanks,

--
Ray Rippey
VMT Software

[NewsArchive]

Ray,

> My update installs are kind of slow on some computers. While their
> internet seems fast enough, I have a bunch of icons that I install and
> that is what seems to take so long... bigger files download fairly quick
> and install.
>
> Do you have some hints to speed this up? Will NOT overwriting icons speed
> it up? And I read somewhere that you could cause everything to download at
> once then install?

It all depends on your update strategy (and the "performance" of your server
and Internet connection).

Let us assume, you are using the Web Install technology with 5,000 small
icon files. As a result, there are 5,000 cluster files located on your
server. And if you always overwrite all icon files during an update (e.g.
you do *not* check if the icon on the target machine is already up-to-date;
using the CRC32 or file date/time stamp options, etc.) then the installer
has to download all 5,000 files!!! This download process (start connection,
download file, terminate connection) definitely slows down the update
process (depending on the reaction time of your server and of the Internet
connection). Let's say it takes 100ms per file (start connection, wait for
server response, download data stream, wait for server response, close
connection). That means, 10 files per second, 600 files per minute, 8.3
minutes for 5,000 files. This is suboptimal. If the server is busy, the
Internet connection has a slow ping, you suddenly have 300ms per file. 25
minutes for 5,000 files and so on...

You have several different options to speed up this process. For example,
you could package all the small icon files into a single ZIP archive and let
the installer download and unzip the file as part of the update process.
SetupBuilder has all the required built-in functions to handle this. As far
as I understand, you do not check if files are already up-to-date on the
target machine(s) to optimize the update process. What about creating a
single-file updater and not XXXX cluster files? Then there will only be one
download process (and not 5,000 actions).

Do you have some more information available? For example, how many files
are part of your update process? What's the compressed size of all the
files? The compiler window should give you this information. We can then
decide the best update strategy for your product.

BTW, if you have 5,000 icon files and on a spicific target machine there are
already 4,997 files up-to-date then the "smart" web update technology can
save time and resources by downloading only the 3 files which are *not*
up-to-date. That's the beauty of web installs.

Friedrich

[NewsArchive]

> Do you have some more information available? For example, how many files
> are part of your update process? What's the compressed size of all the
> files? The compiler window should give you this information. We can then
> decide the best update strategy for your product.

Ok, There are 642 files at about 57mb. The update web folder contains
644 files at about 23mb.

It would be nice to have one big file for the update3 instead of
dw_update.001 through ..00642

It takes time to upload them, then forever to renumber them... and for
slower computers one file is much better.

Thanks,

--
Ray Rippey
VMT Software

[NewsArchive]

> What about creating a
> single-file updater and not XXXX cluster files? Then there will only be one
> download process (and not 5,000 actions).

This sounds like a good idea.. however, while most files overwrite, some
do not if they already exist... just want to make sure that part still
works even with one big download file?


--
Ray Rippey
VMT Software