Troubleshooting SQL errors, server 500 errors

[jgold723]

Of late we have been running into SQL errors and server 500 errors. Based on some research, it seems these may be indicative of a resource problem - i.e., we need more more from our hosting company. The hosting company (Media Temple) has gone back and forth, sometimes acknowledging that they are experiencing high server loads, other times saying we need to optimize the cart to eliminate "slow queries"

I've checked parse times/queries and gotten some numbers, but I have no idea whether these are bad, good or indifferent:

At the low end:

Parse Time: 1.115
Queries: 181
Query Time: .40988

At the high end:
Parse time: 2.367
Queries: 1325
Query Time: 1.2859

How do I analyze these to decide whether we need to tweak the cart, or find a different host?

[stevesh]

Some info here:

http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?...s-numbers-mean

[jgold723]

Thanks for sending that along Steve. Parse times are definitely higher than query times (about twice), but I'm not sure what constitutes a "very large" parse time.

we're seeing anywhere from .944 to 2.367 parse times. Is that "very large"?

John

[DrByte]

"parse time" is how long it takes your store to build and prepare the output for the page, before the page content can be sent down to the browser, so count on a quarter to half second for the content to arrive at the browser after the parse work is done.

If you're happy with it taking 2.367 seconds to build and display the page, then that number isn't large. But if you want faster display times, then the number is too high. Most people want parse and display to take less than 1 second.

As that article says, parse time is about CPU load or ability, and query time is specific to the portion of that time that is consumed specifically with database data retrieval. If the database is too slow, then MySQL needs tuning. If the database is fast but the parse time is long then the CPU is overloaded such as having too many customers on one server.

[jgold723]

Thank you very much -- helps to put those numbers into perspective.

John

[DrByte]

stevesh did point out similarly at the FAQ article: http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?...s-numbers-mean
;)