Why does the translation log say FME only took 0.1 seconds when the process lasted nearly seven minutes

From fmepedia

Q) Why does the translation log say FME only took 0.1 seconds when the process lasted nearly seven minutes?

A) The timing part of the log shows the actual time (e.g. 10.40am), the time FME has spent in processing, and the time FME spent processing the previous command.

The actual time taken may not match the time FME spends processing because of external calls such as database queries, which can’t be logged by FME.

The following example relates to a prefetch query carried out on an Oracle database…

       2004-05-14 17:18:52| 476.1|  0.0|INFORM|Started SQL cache prefetch
       2004-05-14 17:25:10| 476.2|  0.1|INFORM|Finished SQL cache 

…although the time between when we issue the SQL prefetch and until it’s done is roughly seven minutes FME uses only 0.1 seconds of CPU time. The remaining time was spent by Oracle retrieving the data using the query it was given.

To get that time down the user would need to look at how the Oracle database is structured and how the query is written. Perhaps the field searched on isn’t indexed? Maybe the query supplied isn’t as efficient as it could be?