QuickBase Performance

I wasn’t sure if the difference was real, or just my weekend brain running slow, so we put together a benchmark script to see how QuickBase performs hour-to-hour and day-to-day. A QuickBase app runs the script  twice per hour, logging the date, time, and duration when the script ran. An increase in script execution time corresponds with a decrease in QuickBase’s responsiveness.Here’s what we found.

The weekday performance graphs are surprisingly symmetrical. Every morning, from about 6 to 9 (all times are Eastern), the system moves very quickly - our benchmark took anywhere from 8 to 11 minutes to run. This is followed by a sharp rise in response time, to anywhere from 10 to 18 minutes, which lasts until about 6 PM. The numbers fall again from 6 to 9 PM. In the middle of the night, there is another spike, most likely as scheduled batch jobs run.

 

 

QuickBase performace on Weekdays
Performance by Hour

So, for maximum weekday performance, it seems that you’d be best off fitting your work in when you’d ordinarily be eating breakfast or dinner.

Weekends are a completely different (and rather more baffling) story. Saturday and Sunday both show the worst performance times between the hours of 9 PM and 3 AM. The rest of the day is relatively constant at a substantially lower time.

QuickBase performance, Weekdays vs Weekends
Weekday vs Weekend

Bottom Line, I was pleased at how consistent QuickBase’s performance is. There will always be some slowdown during peak work times, but performance never is worse that 50% of off-peak, which I think reflects a good job of load balancing on QuickBase’s end.

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