Thanks You – improved answer calculation time

Thank You!!!! The time needed to check answers has improved by a factor of about 3 with version 7.1.8. This is a dramatic improvement and the team should be congratulated for the progress. Yet, there’s a long way to go to get back to what the time used to be.

I noticed the time needed for checking answers began to slow back around 6.4.2 time.

By 6.4.5, I developed a process to carefully test the calculation time. I use one specific quiz (multiple choice, 12 questions), served on a local server, with no other tasks running. I run the “check answers” function 8 times. Then, I inspect the server logs for timings. BTW, the timestamping on my local is enhanced to add 3 more decimal places. I throw out the slowest, and the fastest, and average the other 6 together. The results over various versions look like this:

* 6.4.5 averages 0.784 seconds (0.386 if no emails to send)
* 6.4.6 had catastrophic failures and was quickly replaced
* 6.4.8 averages 1.344 seconds – 3.48 times slower than 6.4.5 [1.344/0.386]
* 6.4.9 I didn’t test
* 6.4.10 averages 1.761 seconds – 4.56 times slower than 6.4.5
* 6.4.11 averages 1.134 seconds – 2.93 times slower than 6.4.5 — Better! – some db calls reduced
* 6.4.12 averages 2.493 seconds – 6.45 times slower than 6.4.5
* 7.0.0 averages 3.926 seconds – 10.17 times slower than 6.4.5
IMPORTANT: at this point, email posting (sending results to admins and subscribers) was separated from the scoring process. Scoring got ~slightly~ faster. A progress spinner was also added to give people some entertainment while waiting.
* 7.0.1 – averages 3.514 seconds – 9.10 times slower than 6.4.5
* 7.0.2 – averages 3.454 seconds – 8.94 times slower than 6.4.5
* 7.1.1 – averages 3.400 seconds – 8.80 times slower than 6.4.5
* 7.1.2 – averages 3.318 seconds – 8.59 times slower than 6.4.5
* 7.1.3 – averages 3.894 seconds – 10.08 times slower than 6.4.5
* 7.1.4 – averages 4.619 seconds – 11.96 times slower than 6.4.5
* 7.1.5 – replaced in 1 day – divide by 0 error
* 7.1.6 – averages 4.498 seconds – 11.65 times slower than 6.4.5
* 7.1.7 – averages 4.314 seconds – 11.17 times slower than 6.4.5
* 7.1.8 – averages 1.612 seconds – about 3 times faster than 7.1.7 ****amazing improvement!!!
but still 4.17 times slower than 6.4.5

THANKS for the improvement.
Now, can we get back down to sub-second times?