F.A.Q.

Here, you find some typical questions and their answers:

Frage: How many licences will I need?

Antwort: This depends on the number of concurrent accesses. Since there is no limitation on the number of parallel client connections, you should begin with one PeerServer and check to see if this is enough. A query or a redraw will take between 1 and 5 seconds on a medium machine, depending on the data model and the view configuration. Only during this period of time the PeerServer will be locked, and another parallel request will have to wait. Generally, an unlimited number of users can have the connection to SW-Lookup® open parallel, capacity bottlenecks will only occur if several users get active at the same time (like searching or zooming). If the respond times grow too much, you can add more PeerServer licences at any time.

Frage: Is SW-Lookup® delivered with telephone support?

Antwort: Yes, but only in German or English Language. If you have a valid client number, you can access support via the corresponding telephone number (in Germany). If you purchased SW-Lookup® via a partner, he may be responsable for the telephone support. Since friendlyGIS® does not run a call center, support will only be available during normal european office hours. On the other hand, you will always reach a competent person.

Frage: What happens, if anyone "kills" the dispatcher, or if a PeerServer is shut down?

Antwort: If the dispatcher should have been stopped, you have to restart it. Reconnection to the PeerServers will happen without further user interaction. If a PeerServer is stopped, and there are other machines on the network that run an image with SW-Lookup® in it, they will connect to the dispatcher in place of the PeerServer which has gone down. However, this process can be suppressed by explicitly stopping the watchdog mechanism on the PeerServer. Normally, you should run an image with SW-Lookup® code on some more machines than you have licenses. These machines will then try to connect to the dispatcher every 30 seconds. The overhead for this "polling" is very small, and makes a very stable system possible, even if one PeerServer or another should have been stopped.

Frage: How are the tasks dispatched between several PeerServers?

Antwort: This is done by a Last Recently Used (LRU) algorithm, which ensures, that the tasks are distributed equally. You can check this by looking at the last number in the list of active PeerServers (the number of requests), which should roughly be equal for all PeerServers which are running for the same period of time.

Frage: Is it possible to get help with the installation? I am not familiar with such things!?

Antwort: Sure. Even in direct sales, we might provide someone who installs SW-Lookup® on-site. But be aware that friendlyGIS® is located in Germany, which might make it more inexpensive to contact some nearby Smallworld® partner and ask him to contact us (perhaps to become a SW-Lookup® partner?). Also, most componies using Smallworld® GIS have a system administrator on-site, who should be able to install the product.