ID:2287625
 
Problem description:
Still taking 30 seconds to perform simple searches in the forums. It's nearly unusable. Does this impact the whole west coast? I mean, isn't that a concern?

It's not just the west coast. I'm on the east coast and searches still take between 30 seconds and 1 minute.
Wow. I honestly can't believe people have accepted that as the norm. Ultra budget DB hosting?
Homebrew database structure/queries would be my bet.

I honestly can't believe people have accepted that as the norm.

We haven't. It's been unacceptable as long as it's been the case. It just hasn't been fixed.

TBH not using the industry standard PHPBB/SMF forum software after they became a standard was a massive waste of development resources and time.
They didn't just up and regress. He moved the services a while back which introduced the problem which is why I assumed it was either the hosting performance or the route the DB transactions are taking which is what I would guess.
I can confirm that forum searches have been slow for years before the transfer took place. They got worse after the database restructure though: There was a post recently about this.

http://www.byond.com/forum/?post=2221750
This is pretty annoying IMO a simple search takes ages, I understand why it hasn't been fixed the focus is on the engine..

Google site search doesn't cut it for me when searching the forums.
The site search is just as important as the engine. If developers get frustrated because they can't find the resources they need, the engine doesn't matter all that much because they won't stick around to use it. I mean, I've toned my efforts way down and I think it might be because of how frustrated I get every-time I go to find an answer.
At this point, I think just throwing up the Google Search API in place of the current search would be more effective and at least get new developers looking in the right direction.

The current speed of search is barely above not having search functionality at all and even if Google Search doesn't lead to as accurate of results, it at least gets you those results faster so you can troll through them to see if you can find what you're looking for.
I think that the worst thing about search as it is now is that when you finally wait for a minute for the results to show up, if you want to refine your search in any way you have to spend a lot more time waiting.

For example I just searched for NESTalgia which took 57 seconds. Then I wanted to sort the results by date; another 27 seconds. Then I wanted to search all forums. Another 29 seconds.

Adds up to quite a bit :O

I feel that if you could at least set your search parameters PRIOR to your initial search, that could potentially save people a lot of time.
Yeah, that's my point in all this. There is something called "a little slow" and then there is "BYOND slow". ;)

This issue, in my humble .02 opinion is more important than new features and/or bugs that most developers (new or old) won't ever come across.

A new developer is going to spend more time in the forums than they do in code. It's critical they can find answers to their trivial questions.
The forums are built with BYOND CGI. I doubt the database is sql, so queries probably take longer than necessary. It might even be savefiles or text files.

I wouldn't mind lending a hand to help update this. Lummox, let me know if you'd like a hand with any of the website stuff. I did the original CGI for BYONDscape. My programming was terrible at the time, but I've gotten a lot better.
In response to Gambrinus
Gambrinus wrote:
The forums are built with BYOND CGI.

No they're not.
In response to Lummox JR
Lummox JR wrote:
Gambrinus wrote:
The forums are built with BYOND CGI.

No they're not.

Shoot, I stand corrected.
In response to Lummox JR
Lummox JR wrote:
Gambrinus wrote:
The forums are built with BYOND CGI.

No they're not.

Isn't it Perl? Or am I mistaken? It just rings a bell..
I doubt they are still, but if I'm not mistaken, I remember hearing somewhere that the early website was written on a C++ backend. Funny, but not likely the source of any modern issues.

At any rate, speculation like this only really ends up in a circle jerk of "maybe's" that don't really go anywhere. Lummox is a pretty clever cat, so I'm sure this is an issue he's taken 15 minutes looking at before.

I personally feel that my knowledge of database backend is just enough to get me into trouble, but not enough to solve any real efficiency issues, so I'll just leave this to the gurus. :P
In response to A.T.H.K
A.T.H.K wrote:
Lummox JR wrote:
Gambrinus wrote:
The forums are built with BYOND CGI.

No they're not.

Isn't it Perl? Or am I mistaken? It just rings a bell..

It does ring a bell. I actually seem to remember Tom discussing a Perl back-end, too. Also, around the time frame a lot of this was implemented, Perl was pretty popular.

It doesn't really matter, because any performance issues probably stem from how the database queries information. PHP, for instance, is incredibly inefficient compared to Perl in terms of performance. But since PHP merely interfaces with MySQL and MySQL does the query work, it can actually work very effectively.

Kats wrote:
At any rate, speculation like this only really ends up in a circle jerk of "maybe's" that don't really go anywhere. Lummox is a pretty clever cat, so I'm sure this is an issue he's taken 15 minutes looking at before.

I'm in agreeance. No point speculating. My intention was to sincerely offer a hand. Some life changes just happened for me and I have more free time on my hands than usual. BYOND has given me many years of enjoyment and taught me a great deal.

I, too, have noticed the forum search is unacceptably slow, especially compared to any kind of modern message board, and would like to offer a hand. My first thought is, if the database isn't mysql, then we should migrate that way. My second thought is, if it is mysql and the query is literally taking that long, then we need to optimize the database.
I'd personally love to see how the queries are structured, how the forum schema looks, and what engines are being used in general.