FileMaker Server 13 has a misconfigured server.xml that is slowing down XML requests (1 Comment)

Issue report by jbarnum

Product

FileMaker Server

Version

13.0.1

Operating system version

Windows Server 2008r2

Description of the issue

XML requests that should take about less than 100 milliseconds, such as getting a list of database names, are taking 1,100-1,200 milliseconds.

Steps to reproduce the problem

From OS X, use this command to see how long it takes to get a list of databases:

ab -n 10 "http://yourServer/fmi/xml/FMPXMLRESULT.xml?-dbnames"

Expected result

I expect most of these request to be well under 100 milliseconds. In FileMaker 12, this same test would be around 20-40 milliseconds.

Actual result

For example, here is this command run on one of our hosting servers:
jesse:~ jesse$ ab -n 10 "http://iatse.360works.com/fmi/xml/FMPXMLRESULT.xml?-dbnames"
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 655654 $>
Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Licensed to The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/

Benchmarking iatse.360works.com (be patient).....done


Server Software: Microsoft-IIS/7.5
Server Hostname: iatse.360works.com
Server Port: 80

Document Path: /fmi/xml/FMPXMLRESULT.xml?-dbnames
Document Length: 806 bytes

Concurrency Level: 1
Time taken for tests: 11.942 seconds
Complete requests: 10
Failed requests: 0
Write errors: 0
Total transferred: 9900 bytes
HTML transferred: 8060 bytes
Requests per second: 0.84 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 1194.188 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 1194.188 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 0.81 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 31 34 1.3 34 36
Processing: 1051 1161 96.7 1193 1335
Waiting: 1051 1160 96.7 1193 1335
Total: 1083 1194 96.5 1227 1366

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 1227
66% 1227
75% 1228
80% 1303
90% 1366
95% 1366
98% 1366
99% 1366
100% 1366 (longest request)

Exact text of any error message(s) that appear

n/a

Workaround

We've noticed that if we modify the <Connector> element at FileMaker Server/Web Publishing/publishing-engine/jwpc-tomcat/conf/server.xml, and remove the attribute that says address="127.0.0.1", then the problem is fixed. Here is the output from another server, with identical hardware specs and operating system, after applying this change:

jesse:~ jesse$ ab -n 10 "http://ms-demo.360works.com/fmi/xml/FMPXMLRESULT.xml?-dbnames"
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 655654 $>
Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Licensed to The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/

Benchmarking ms-demo.360works.com (be patient).....done


Server Software: Microsoft-IIS/7.5
Server Hostname: ms-demo.360works.com
Server Port: 80

Document Path: /fmi/xml/FMPXMLRESULT.xml?-dbnames
Document Length: 791 bytes

Concurrency Level: 1
Time taken for tests: 0.736 seconds
Complete requests: 10
Failed requests: 0
Write errors: 0
Total transferred: 9750 bytes
HTML transferred: 7910 bytes
Requests per second: 13.58 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 73.615 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 73.615 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 12.93 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 31 34 1.6 34 35
Processing: 37 40 3.3 39 49
Waiting: 37 40 3.3 39 49
Total: 68 74 3.4 74 81

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 74
66% 74
75% 74
80% 75
90% 81
95% 81
98% 81
99% 81
100% 81 (longest request)