How FME Logs Database Information

Databases are an important component of many datasets and the log file will help us determine both how good our database performance is, plus how well FME is interacting with the database.

The following example relates to a prefetch query carried out on an Oracle database:

2004-05-14 17:18:52| 476.1|  0.0|INFORM|Started SQL cache prefetch       

2004-05-14 17:25:10| 476.2|  0.1|INFORM|Finished SQL cache

Although the time between when you issue the SQL prefetch and until it is complete is roughly 7 minutes, FME uses only 0.1 seconds of CPU time. The remaining time was spent by Oracle retrieving the data using the query it was given. To reduce that time, you would need to look at how the Oracle database is structured and how the query is written. Perhaps the field searched on isn’t indexed? Maybe the query supplied isn’t as efficient as it could be?

Note  Check the log carefully to find out how much database-related time is spent outside of FME and see if you need to improve your database efficiency.