NWNX4Clock vs NWNX MySQL

[Morrandir]

Hello there!

My first question goes to kungfoowiz:
Do you plan to implement a function GetCurrentTimestamp(), which returns the current Unix timestamp from the machine?

Second question is for both Papillon and kungfoowiz:
Considering server performance, is it better then to use the GetTime() function from nwnx4clock or do a mysql query "select NOW()"?

Thanks for your work, btw.
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German NWN1/2 Persistent World Hochwaldallianz

[Morrandir]

I can answer the second question myself - I think this is quite interesting for some of you guys.
I just measured time of getting the current time with a "select now()" query on the one hand, and with GetSystemTime() (from NWNXclock) on the other hand 500 times each.

NWNXClock: 10 miliseconds
NWNXSQL: 3 seconds


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German NWN1/2 Persistent World Hochwaldallianz

[kungfoowiz]

Hello Morrandir

I haven't had much time to play around with NWNX4 lately due to work commitments, rest assured I'll put some time into it this week.

Yes, I'll put in UNIX-style timestamping. My other bud actually asked me for that a couple weeks back. Consider it officially on the feature list and I'll update the plugin this week for you.

I can only surmise that the extra time there is incurred due to waiting for the string data to pass between the various programs like so:

NWN2 <-> NWNX4Clock
NWN2 <-> NWNX4MySQL <-> MySQL DB

---
kung

[Disco]

Mind that NOW() doesn't give you a UNIX timestamp, but a MySQL timestamp.

YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS = MySQL
Seconds from 1970 = UNIX

I asked Kung to make this (well, I actually don't care if it starts counting from 1-1-2007) to use it for long delay blocks, such as on disabled spawn triggers.

I hope he makes it NWN2 compatible as well... please?

[virusman]

[Morrandir]

[Papillon]

Retrieving 500 rows from MySQL takes 22 milliseconds, and now you say that getting the current time takes like ... 150 times longer ? There is something very wrong here .
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Papillon

[Morrandir]

Well... I'll post the code tonight (as I'm not at home atm).
I just don't think there are things in it, that can be 'wrong'.
It's just a for-loop with 500 iterations, and inside is a "select now()" query. Afterwards from the resulting string the hour is retreived with GetSubstring().

And.. well... think it makes quite a difference if you retreive 500 rows with one single SELECT statement or if you do 500 seperate SELECT statements, doesn't it?
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German NWN1/2 Persistent World Hochwaldallianz

[Papillon]

Oh, I'm not saying that something in your test has to be wrong, but somewhere in the chain of communication there is something slowing things down. Maybe the GetSubString function eats up a lot of time as well ?
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Papillon

[Morrandir]

Well then, have a look at this:

[Gryphyn]

not exactly a fair comparison...
GetSubString(...,0,2) will always be faster that GetSubString(...,11,2)
-- but not by that much

what speeds do you get with

//retreive current hour with NWNXClock
const string sQuery = "select now()";
int GetCurrentHour(){
SQLExecDirect(sQuery);
if (SQLFetch() == SQL_SUCCESS){
string sData = SQLGetData(1);
return StringToInt(GetSubString(sData, 11, 2));
} else {
return -1;
}
}

*curiosity factor - in theory it should be faster than the original

Cheers
Gryphyn

[virusman]

[Disco]

[Morrandir]

@Gryphyn
I'll give it a try without GetSubString() at all tonight.
I've heard before that String functions are quite expensive in NWN, but I don't really think, that should make such a difference, as you mentioned yourself.

@Disco
Yes, I know about the difference.
I just need a UNIX timestamp for another system, to test if two points of time differ more than a certain time span.
And if this will be as fast as GetSystemTime, I'll rather use NWNXClock than NWNXMySQL.
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German NWN1/2 Persistent World Hochwaldallianz

[Morrandir]

I just removed the GetSubString() function and returned a string instead: