ProjectWise includes file transfer technology that can significantly reduce the amount of time required to check out and check in ProjectWise documents. This technology, referred to as Delta File Transfer (DFT), optimizes file transfers by only transferring those parts of a file that have been modified. Because the performance of this feature is greatly dependent on an organization's network infrastructure, a benchmark tool has been provided with the ProjectWise Administrator installer that will allow the end-user to perform various file transfer tests to determine how much of a benefit DFT will provide.
If you are running this test against a new datasource, DFT is on by default. If you are running this test against a datasource that has been upgraded from a pre-V8i version, you must first enable the Delta File Transfer datasource setting.
Note: You do not need administrator privileges to run the Delta File Transfer Benchmark Tool, however you will need to run the tool as an administrator if you want the tool to collect performance counter data.
Note: DFT technology is designed to provide better file transfer performance over low-bandwidth/high-latency network links. It is possible that negative performance results may occur when using DFT over high-speed LAN links. This is a known shortcoming of any kind of differential file transfer algorithm.
Note: As a security measure,
ProjectWise limits the amount of time that may pass between the start of a checkout command and the start of the actual file transfer from the storage area to the client. With the introduction of DFT,
ProjectWise must now spend additional time calculating the deltas (differences) between the two files prior to the actual file transfer operation itself. In some cases, for exceptionally large files, the time required to calculate the differences may exceed the checkout/file transfer time limit. In this case, the value of the
FileAccessTokenLifetime setting in the dmskrnl.cfg file may need to be increased to deal with these scenarios. A service restart is not needed after this value is modified; the new time limit will take effect immediately.
After the test completes you have the option of saving off the results for later review. There is also an option to submit your results to Bentley for analysis. We ask that you do so, so that we can tune the DFT feature to be more performant on our customer's real-world systems.
Note: No personally identifiable information (other than your email address) or information about your organization's internal infrastructure is transmitted to Bentley. You will be given a change to review the full and complete text of the email before it is submitted to Bentley, and you will be given an opportunity to decline to send the email.
