[LON-CAPA-users] Slow response from clicking on "Course Contents"

[Amos Lee]

Hi,

I'm wondering if anyone else has a similar experience.

    We upgraded Lon Capa from version 2.5.0-2007081514 to version
2.10.0-2011060317 in the summer of 2011.  Since the upgrade, we always 
notice that the response time after one clicks on "Course Contents" has 
increased by about a factor of six.

    More specifically, we run a Placement Test with 30 questions.  Back 
when we were using version 2.5.0, it took about 5 seconds (and in all cases 
no more than 10 seconds) to get a total response from Lon Capa on the 
status of all 30 questions (that is, which questions have/have not been 
submitted, and how much time is left before timing out, etc).

    But with version 2.10.0, we immediately noticed that it took about 15 
to 20 seconds to get an initial response from the system on the first 15 to 
18 questions, and then one has to wait for another 15 seconds or so to get 
the rest of it from the system.  All-in-all, after click on Course 
Contents, it would generally take 30 to 35 seconds before one can tell 
which questions have not been submitted and how much time is left.  So 
students and TAs are not eager to click on Course Contents, especially 
toward the end of the test when time is close to running out.

    I'm wondering whether this sluggish response to clicking on "Course 
Contents" that we have been experiencing is unique to our installation. 
There has been no change at all to our implementation of our Placement Test 
since we started using 2.5.0. It is the same Test ("Course") that we cloned 
every time we run it.  I'm also wondering whether it has something to do 
with our reliance on "Convert to images" for the "Force use of a specific 
math rendering engine" parameter.

Thanks,

Amos Lee
Math & Stats
Univ of Sask