FP Server 6.1 takes longer than before

We utilize our own website area and tie FusionPro Server into it. We've upgraded to 6.1 on each server which runs Acrobat 8.0 using Windows 2000 Server. Prior to this we had the same machines and Operating System but ran 4.2P1d using Acrobat 6.0.

When I do a batch command line execution of FusionPro Server the program still runs fine and the actual composition time takes about the same (a couple of second usually and no more than 15 or 20sec at the most for the single records that we do for proofing). However I now notice that the loading of the FusionPro Server program before it begins the composition take 3 to 4 times longer with 6.1 than it did with 4.2.

This wouldn't really be too much of a problem except that almost all of our web sites were "timing out" when waiting for the resulting pdf from FusionPro to display it on the site. We couldn't figure out why when we looked at the composition .msg file and determined the time it took to compile the output we needed hadn't increased - and in some cases actually decreased. It only came to light when I did a hard code command line composition and noticed the start-up delay time was way longer.

Is 6.1 really that much more robust than 4.2 to take this much longer on the servers to start? I thought that FP Server was supposed to be faster becuase it didn't have all those "extraneous plug-ins and gui screens" to load?

Is 6.1 really that much more robust than 4.2 to take this much longer on the servers to start?

Please see my reply to a similar thread here:

http://forums.printable.com/showpost.php?p=3644&postcount=3

Basically, you're jumping up several versions between 4.2 and 6.1, and there are a lot of changes, the biggest of which is Unicode support. In the post I linked to above, I explain how to disable Unicode support for jobs which don't need it.

I thought that FP Server was supposed to be faster becuase it didn't have all those "extraneous plug-ins and gui screens" to load?

Yes, generally batch compositions through FusionPro Server or Direct will be faster than interactive compositions inside Acrobat with FusionPro Desktop, for the same version of FusionPro and on similar hardware.