# What does it feel like to work with 10,000 notes in Org-roam: Benchmarking Org-roam's search methods **URL:** \ **Category:** Development\ **Created:** [May 31, 2020, 3:15pm UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/what-does-it-feel-like-to-work-with-10-000-notes-in-org-roam-benchmarking-org-roams-search-methods/227 "2020-05-31T15:15:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![nobiot](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/org-roam.discourse.group/nobiot/32/159_2.png) [@nobiot](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/nobiot)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2020, 3:15pm UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/what-does-it-feel-like-to-work-with-10-000-notes-in-org-roam-benchmarking-org-roams-search-methods/227/1 "2020-05-31T15:15:22Z")
# What does it feel like to work with 10,000 notes in Org-roam: Benchmarking Org-roam’s search methods ## Intro I got inspiration from this exchange in Org-roam Discourse on [“Performance Testing”](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/performance-testing/213). I went ahead, downloaded the 10,000 markdown files, and took Org-roam (with [Md-roam](https://github.com/nobiot/md-roam) as a companion) for a quick spin. Here is my quick write-up, and [my short video demo](https://youtu.be/Bd6cXpsuZCs) to share the impression with the community here. The write-up would feel more like lab notes rather than finished paper—I have never been a scientist, so it’s just my imagination… Thank you, @cobblepot, for the link to the 10,000 markdown files 😄 ## Summary - I find it good and workable with 10,000 notes. - For `org-roam--list-files-xx` functions, I observe significant performance difference between `elisp` and `rg` (two different search methods that work for Windows)—I suspect it would affect performance of `org-roam-insert` and `org-roam-find-file`, but I did not confirm this myself - `elisp` starts out faster, but then the performance degrades linearly. `rg` is flat for 100, 1,000, and 10,000 files. `rg` starts to be more attractive after between 2,000 and 3,000 files. `elisp` does not seem feasible at the 10,000 mark - The first DB build for 10,000 files take 6–7 minutes with my machine. Given that you would have to do this once in a while—you should build your DB overtime, and only occasionally would you need to re-build your DB—it should not be a problem - After the initial build, launching Org-roam takes about a minute (`org-roam-db-build-cache` needs this time). It might be once a day when you start working with PC; or it could be once in some weeks if you don’t turn it off. Not bad, for 10,000 knowledge base helping you generate more and better knowledge work - Inserting and searching an existing note is OK—see my 2-minute [YouTube video](https://youtu.be/Bd6cXpsuZCs) for an impression yourself There are obvious limitations to my tests. - I only looked at the number of files; I did not create many more number of backlinks among the files. To prepare this data, I would need some programming support to add links in the 10,000 files. I do not know the SQL and DB architecture enough to assess if I should expect big difference in performance if you had exponentially more backlinks - In addition, I didn’t test graph capabilities, and I didn’t have notes in subdirectories in `org-roam-directory`. I do not expect subdirectories would change performance much, but I can be wrong ## Environment - Windows 10 (64-bit) - Emacs 26.3 - sqlite3 3.32.0 - Org-roam commit [`b2594b8`](https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam/commit/b2594b84aef131ab24dd477a4bd7b2d1a6ca7621) - Md-roam commit [`12dff25`](https://github.com/nobiot/md-roam/commit/12dff254e13e21a029afde5aaef995742c456d76) I do not know where the machine power starts to play a significant role, but here are basic characteristics of mine: - Processor: Intel Core i7-8650U 1.90 GHz - RAM: 16.0 GB ## Method It’s rather rudimentary set-up and easy manual execution. 1. Download 10,000 markdown files from [here](https://github.com/Zettelkasten-Method/10000-markdown-files) 2. Unzip, copy 100, 1000, 2000 files to separate folders 3. Change configuration for `org-roam-directory` to point to the respective folder for each case 4. Run benchmark with interactive function `benchmark` as: ```auto (benchmark 10 '(org-roam--list-files-xx "full/path/to/org-roam-directory")) ``` (I learned about `benchmark` from GitHub user siawyoung in [this exchange on Org-roam PR](https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam/pull/664)). Thanks!) The full path seems to be required for Windows as `~/` does not seem to expand in this form. It seems that for Windows I need to use `\\` for the path. 1. Run the benchmark again and record the elapsed time for both the first and second repeats. ## Results ### 100 notes ```auto (benchmark 10 '(org-roam--list-files-elisp "C:\\Users\\nobiot\\100-markdown")) Elapsed time: 0.400056s Elapsed time: 0.264749s (benchmark 10 '(org-roam--list-files-rg "C:\\Users\\nobiot\\scoop\\shims\\rg.exe" "C:\\Users\\nobiot\\100-markdown")) Elapsed time: 5.150758s Elapsed time: 5.137724s ``` ### 1,000 ```auto (benchmark 10 '(org-roam--list-files-elisp "C:\\Users\\nobiot\\1000-markdown")) Elapsed time: 2.274566s (0.079555s in 1 GCs) Elapsed time: 2.486280s (benchmark 10 '(org-roam--list-files-rg "C:\\Users\\nobiot\\scoop\\shims\\rg.exe" "C:\\Users\\nobiot\\1000-markdown")) Elapsed time: 5.174479s Elapsed time: 5.167108s ``` ### 2,000 ```auto (benchmark 10 '(org-roam--list-files-elisp "C:\\Users\\nobiot\\2000-markdown")) Elapsed time: 4.788072s (0.069892s in 1 GCs) Elapsed time: 4.725148s (0.075500s in 1 GCs) (benchmark 10 '(org-roam--list-files-rg "C:\\Users\\nobiot\\scoop\\shims\\rg.exe" "C:\\Users\\nobiot\\2000-markdown")) Elapsed time: 5.151170s Elapsed time: 5.095258s ``` ### 10,000 notes ```auto (benchmark 10 '(org-roam--list-files-elisp "C:\\Users\\nobiot\\10000-markdown")) Elapsed time: 22.899702s (0.419321s in 6 GCs) Elapsed time: 22.441639s (0.408953s in 6 GCs) (benchmark 10 '(org-roam--list-files-rg "C:\\Users\\nobiot\\scoop\\shims\\rg.exe" "C:\\Users\\nobiot\\10000-markdown")) Elapsed time: 6.148009s (0.067745s in 1 GCs) Elapsed time: 6.456070s (0.162346s in 2 GCs) ``` ### org-roam-db-build-cache Build the db file from scratch (no db file exists). I’m not repeating to wait for that long for `org-roam-db-build-cache`. ```auto (benchmark 1 '(org-roam-db-build-cache)) (org-roam) files: 10000, links: 0, tags: 0, titles: 10000, refs: 0, deleted: 0 Elapsed time: 376.709222s (28.662395s in 521 GCs) ``` Once the db is built, run `org-roam-db-build-cache` again. This happens every time you re-launch Emacs and Org-roam, even if there has been no change to notes after you shutdown Emacs and restart it. ```auto (benchmark 1 '(org-roam-db-build-cache)) (org-roam) files: 0, links: 0, tags: 0, titles: 0, refs: 0, deleted: 0 Elapsed time: 47.147790s (0.913966s in 18 GCs) ``` ## Video demo to share impression My [video demo](https://youtu.be/Bd6cXpsuZCs) uses `org-roam--list-files-rg`, instead of the default `org-roam--list-files-elisp`. ## Limitation of this performance testing - Few backlinks between notes If you have multiple backlinks between notes, you might potentially exponetially higher volume of data. I am not sure how this translates to our perceived performance of the system. - Related to the backlinks, I didn’t test graph capabilities. - I had only flat directory. I don’t necessarily expect it would be much different, but use of subdirectories might influence performance. ## Coda It was fun. It also feels to me like a useful exercise. Hope you can take away something useful from my report and video, too. I don’t know how I can add backlinks easily. Perhaps someone in the community can go beyond my tests here, and see where that takes us to. Luhmann is said to have had 90,000 slip-notes ([source](https://sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/8350/8270), and referenced [here](https://writingcooperative.com/zettelkasten-how-one-german-scholar-was-so-freakishly-productive-997e4e0ca125)). I don’t think I’ll ever reach the 10,000 mark, but it’s good to imagine what it could be like. It seems Org-roam can continue to be your good companion there. Happy note taking. ---
**Author:** ![scotto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b38774/32.png) [@scotto](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/scotto)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2020, 7:49pm UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/what-does-it-feel-like-to-work-with-10-000-notes-in-org-roam-benchmarking-org-roams-search-methods/227/2 "2020-05-31T19:49:21Z")
Nice to see! I had a niggling doubt about how org-roam would scale well after a year’s worth of notes. Looks like I don’t have to worry. ---
**Author:** ![nobiot](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/org-roam.discourse.group/nobiot/32/159_2.png) [@nobiot](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/nobiot)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2020, 8:24pm UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/what-does-it-feel-like-to-work-with-10-000-notes-in-org-roam-benchmarking-org-roams-search-methods/227/3 "2020-05-31T20:24:15Z")
Yes, that’s my conclusion, too, so far. There are limitations to my quick investigation, though. As I noted in the body, I can’t see the influence of links, which are the heart of Org-roam. I would really love to see what I have done to be extended to investigate if the number of links among the notes significantly affects performance… ---
**Author:** ![jethro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5a626/32.png) [@jethro](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/jethro)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2020, 5:39am UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/what-does-it-feel-like-to-work-with-10-000-notes-in-org-roam-benchmarking-org-roams-search-methods/227/4 "2020-06-01T05:39:29Z")
Nice benchmarks! I’d like to have these sort of benchmark tests run in the CI too, to make sure they aren’t too slow. Someone pointed out that org-roam was performing multiple parses of each file to extract things. The numbers you see for `org-roam-db-build-cache` can probably be significantly improved 😃 ---
**Author:** ![siawyoung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@siawyoung](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/siawyoung)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2020, 5:26pm UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/what-does-it-feel-like-to-work-with-10-000-notes-in-org-roam-benchmarking-org-roams-search-methods/227/5 "2020-06-06T17:26:30Z")
Hey! I was the original author of the PR that introduced find and ripgrep into `org-roam--list-files`. Glad to see someone taking more serious benchmarks 😀 I wrote a short commentary about the implementation here: [https://siawyoung.com/org-roam-rg-find](https://siawyoung.com/org-roam-rg-find) based on the original, buggy PR that I submitted. ---
**Author:** ![nobiot](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/org-roam.discourse.group/nobiot/32/159_2.png) [@nobiot](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/nobiot)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2020, 8:35pm UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/what-does-it-feel-like-to-work-with-10-000-notes-in-org-roam-benchmarking-org-roams-search-methods/227/6 "2020-06-06T20:35:46Z")
@siawyoung, yeah, cool implementation! With additional commits, now we can use `rg` on Windows, too (the only thing is it takes a bit to install it). I’m working to extend the benchmark I did; hopefully I can do a write up about it, too 🙂 Thank you for your initiative to implement the feature in the first place 👍