shah’s notebook

One of my past project was to develop a double-entry system which compare the same record entered by two different staff. Recently, the client complained about the system being painfully slow. My colleagues blame the helper function that do the comparison. I removed the view so the is no comparison running (the controller is basically tell the model to find all record and pass the results back to view). Even so, the system is still slow. Somehow I was convinced that this is the database-level problem not my software.

Armed with phpmyadmin, I ran a simple find operation that retrieve the first two records in the main table (there are 30k of rows in there). It took a quite long time (seems live forever to me) for mysql to get the results. I wasn’t sure what the problem was, but I was glad that my software wasn’t the culprit.

To cut the long story short, after few hours of investigation, I simply changed the storage engine from InnoDB to MyISAM as the last resort and it works like a charm! Complex database query is 4 times quicker and the system now runs significantly faster and my client live happily ever after..

The end

I’ve been planning to get a PC intended for home server usage. Usually I would built a PC myself but considering that I don’t have the time and Intel Atom processor is not available to consumer market yet, the only way is buy one. So I was browsing Lowyat.net forum, I found out that one of the forum member, Mika offered an Intel Atom 230 Super Mini ITX PC package for only MYR 750 and it doesn’t took long for me to place an order. What’s really interest me about this processor is that it consume small amount of power. You can read the processor review here.

The specs:

• CPU: Intel Atom 230 1.6GHz
• Mainboard: Intel D945GCLF
• RAM: 1.0GB DDR2-667
• HDD: Western Digital 320GB 7200RPM 16MB SATA
• DVD: LG 20X SATA DVD±RW/RAM Multi-Format Dual Layer
• Casing: MI-100 ITX Super Mini Casing with Front Panel USB, Audio & 300W 24-Pin SATA PSU

Intel Atom 230 Super Mini ITX PC

While the specs are just average, it is good enough to work as a home server. I can’t show the pictures as the PC is not here yet. It might take at least two days to arrived at my home. Here’s a review from one of the buyer, in case you’re wondering how it performs.

Tags: intel atom, intel d945gclf, mini pc