Comparison of Secure
message client applications on a Doctors Desktop
We compared the system
resource usage of some of the most popular Pathology and Radiology download
clients in common use in
All programs were installed
on a single laptop computer with 1GB of RAM running Windows XP Pro. After 1 day of normal operations, the Windows
Task manager was opened and the statistics were recorded.
The following statistics
were calculated.
|
Sum of Memory used |
Sum of Memory used by
all downloaders |
|
% of Memory used |
(Memory used / Sum of
Memory Used ) *100 |
|
% of Memory used at Peak |
(Peak Memory used / Sum of
Memory Used ) *100 |
|
Sum of CPU Time Used |
Sum of CPU Times for all
downloaders |
|
% of CPU Time Used: |
(CPU Time used / Sum of CPU
Time Used ) * 100 |
|
Usage Score (arbitrary rank) |
% of CPU Time Used + % of Memory used at Peak + (0.5 *% of CPU Time Used) |
The version of AllTalk used was 1.1.1.83.
This version includes the PKI module which provides Public Key
Infrastructure encryption technology in addition to Alltalk Native
encryption. It is also worth noting that
this client is configured to connect to 4 different service providers.
RESULTS:
The raw data and
calculated values were tabulated and ranked according to Usage Score are shown
below.
Table comparing System
Resource Usage for Several Secure Message Clients on a single computer
|
Application |
Memory
Usage(Bytes) |
Peak
Memory (bytes) |
CPU
Time |
% of
Memory Used |
% of
Memory used at Peak |
% of
CPU Time |
Usage
Score |
|
MQLink (Mgmnt only) |
2824 |
5500 |
0:00:09 |
2.05 |
3.99 |
0.10 |
6.09 |
|
Alltalk Virtual Printer |
3484 |
7732 |
0:00:07 |
2.53 |
5.61 |
0.08 |
8.18 |
|
Alltalk (PKI Loaded) |
5576 |
6484 |
0:00:08 |
4.05 |
4.71 |
0.09 |
8.80 |
|
AllTalk
(Combined) |
9060 |
14216 |
0:00:15 |
6.57 |
10.32 |
0.17 |
16.98 |
|
eClinic |
11752 |
16916 |
0:00:26 |
8.53 |
12.28 |
0.30 |
20.95 |
|
miLink |
10348 |
21580 |
0:00:02 |
7.51 |
15.66 |
0.02 |
23.18 |
|
Argus Agent *estimated |
27816 |
27816 |
0:00:10 |
20.19 |
20.19 |
0.12 |
40.43 |
|
Fetch |
20868 |
30812 |
0:38:13 |
15.14 |
22.36 |
26.54 |
50.77 |
|
Health Link |
30460 |
40796 |
0:00:30 |
22.10 |
29.61 |
0.35 |
51.88 |
|
Medical Objects |
41184 |
54252 |
0:00:49 |
29.89 |
39.37 |
0.57 |
69.54 |
|
2Hippo |
63948 |
119724 |
1:43:10 |
46.41 |
86.88 |
71.65 |
169.11 |
|
Total memory Used |
137800 |
|
2:23:59 |
|
|
|
|
Note: Argus
Agent was not running at the time of the test.
The Argus Agent application was started on a different computer and the
memory usage examined at immediately.
The peak usage is set arbitrarily at the same as the idle usage and thus
will not show a true comparison.
The Usage scores were
graphed.
MQLink shows the least resource usage. However MQLinks usage only represent the
management and maintenance tools. The download client runs a DOS application
periodically and this information is not recorded in the windows Task
Manager. 2Hippo demonstrates the most
resource usage in the order 2.5 times its nearest rival (Medical objects). It may be worse than this since the back-end
database service is likely to be using additional resources although we could
not confirm what backend (if any) there was at the time of writing.
The combined system
resource usage of Alltalk and AVP are less than 5% of that of the worst
performing application (2Hippo) and approximately 40% of its nearest competitor
(eClinic) for message delivery services. Even when combined with the AVP option which
provides HeSA token PKI signing services and Practice software interface
services, the resources used by all AllTalk processes
is still lower than the nearest competitor’s delivery services only.
Glen Kleidon 3rd
May 2007.
Thanks go to Dr Brian
Conway who’s computer was used in the tests and who
captured the images.