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Ramón G Castañeda
Ramón G Castañeda
Inspiring
May 16, 2009
Question

Sorry, JC—Jive lied!

  • May 16, 2009
  • 5 replies
  • 5946 views

I'm referencing the Widgets Query in the FAQs of this forum:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/1963810?tstart=0#1963810

Do widgets like "more like this" and "popular discussions" and "top participants" exact any performance hit when they are being figured out and displayed?

                                                                                                                       

Reply from Jive Software:

No. In fact these do the exact opposite. If anything, they would be improving performance in the system. These widgets do everything asynchronously so they will simply fire off a request for this data, the system will crunch the numbers then return the result to the page to be displayed. This is all done in real time so even though the widget may still be loading the rest of the page should be displayed and working correctly.

This is categorically NOT true.

The fact is that the longest delay in the forums is when waiting for those results, always at least several seconds, during which the whole browser is unusable as the satus bar reads "waiting for stats.adobe.com" and/or "transferring data from stats.adobe.com".  Sometimes the wait can be so long as to trigger a connection timeout, on other occasions it just hangs there indefinitely until I force quit the browser (indistinctly Firefox, Safari, iCab, etc.).  The page is viewable but not scrollable during the delay.

That response from Jive can only stem from outright bad faith or boundless incompetence and ignorance.  

(Insert Gandhi quote here for the edification of Jive staff.)

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    5 replies

    adobe-admin
    adobe-admin
    Legend
    May 19, 2009

    stats.adobe.com has nothing to do with Jive. Those are things from adobe.com. Nothing to do with the widgets.

    A
    Anonymous
    May 19, 2009

    adobe-admin wrote:

    stats.adobe.com has nothing to do with Jive. Those are things from adobe.com. Nothing to do with the widgets.

    Oh, I wasn't talking about that aspect. I was responding to their claim that their "features" quoted in the OP actually improve performance instead of slowing it. 

    I'm actually not seeing any obvious slowness from stats.adobe.com, but it could just be the browser I'm using (Chrome).

    adobe-admin
    adobe-admin
    Legend
    May 19, 2009

    Ansury wrote:

    adobe-admin wrote:

    stats.adobe.com has nothing to do with Jive. Those are things from adobe.com. Nothing to do with the widgets.

    Oh, I wasn't talking about that aspect. I was responding to their claim that their "features" quoted in the OP actually improve performance instead of slowing it. 

    The response was to another post, not to yours.

    A
    Anonymous
    May 19, 2009

    "No. In fact these do the exact opposite. If anything, they would be improving performance in the system."

    Yeah, this is a dishonest response. In practice I'm sure not confident that they have any idea what they're doing with their fancy "optimizations"--if they worked we wouldn't be complaining about speed in this "modern system".  And in theory it's bull too.  Actually, one of the most annoying things I find about these forums is that it tries to "partially" load stuff but you can't actually interact with it until it's finished loading.


    But really, this is a shortsighted view that only looks at the immediate effect on one user. What about the aggregate effect when multiple users are making queries to the server? Users slow down other users, so even if they don't have to wait any extra time for additional data like this, it still puts additional load on the database and/or server as a whole.  It doesn't matter that they're simultaneously executed requests once you put multiple users into the equation!


    Of course having these features negatively impacts overall performance, saying otherwise defies common sense.  If they're willing to challenge common sense like this, it just proves that they're better salesmen than developers.  They should run for political office...

    Man--we got Jived again! This is all Jived up...

    Chris Cox
    Chris Cox
    Legend
    May 18, 2009

    OK, that's interesting.

    I don't think stats.adobe.com is part of the forums.  I think it's a stats gathering database for adobe.com in general.

    Hmm, do you know of any good utilities that will count URLs to sites used in loading a page and the time taken for each URL?  That might help isolate some of the slowdowns.

    Mark_A__Boyd
    Mark_A__Boyd
    Inspiring
    May 18, 2009

    For general information, in Safari, you can turn on Preferences->Show Develop menu in menu bar

    Then, use Develop->Network Timeline to get a general idea. That little colored bar at the bottom can be toggled between "Transfer Time" and "Transfer Size"

    In this particular case, stats.adobe.com comes under the grey "Other" in my screen grab. It doesn't take that long by itself, but it gets triggered near the end.

    For detailed info, you can use a packet sniffer such as WireShark (formerly Ethereal) www.wireshark.org

    Chris Cox
    Chris Cox
    Legend
    May 18, 2009

    Oooh, I didn't know about that in Safari (been a while since I had to debug anything serious on the web).  Thanks!

    Octagate also looks quite useful.

    http://www.octagate.com/service/SiteTimer/?Target=AJAX

    Ramón G Castañeda
    Ramón G CastañedaAuthor
    Inspiring
    May 16, 2009

    Ramón G Castañeda wrote:

    (Insert Gandhi quote here for the edification of Jive staff.)

    This is a genuine, well-known quote by Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian spiritual leader and activist:

    • A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him.


    • He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it.


    • He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it.


    • We are not doing him a favor by serving him.     He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.

    http://tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:QU-_-MGLrrqQhM:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Gandhi_costume.jpg

    Employees of any entity, whether in government or in private business, will do well to keep it in mind and at heart.

    The recent post by Kathy Nguyen, universally well received here, shows that she knows this principle and puts it into practice.  So does John Cornicello, of course.

    However, a few Adobe staff and associates seem somehow to think that Adobe's customers are lowly adversaries in some sort of Internet game or in a newsgroup.  Those who manifest that misguided and poisonous attitude in this forum and in their blogs are showing their incompetence and their ignorance of basic business principles.  To them I say:  you're dead wrong!  You are far from being our superiors, you are our servants.

    They should know well who they are—and we certainly do.

    Jive Software staff needs to heed this admonition too.  Adobe is a Jive Customer.

    A
    Anonymous
    May 16, 2009

    I said the same but with less words!  

    http://forums.adobe.com/message/1968237#1968237

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