Slow DOORS v 9.1 performance issues.....

mcnairk - Fri Oct 23 08:42:09 EDT 2009
Some things to check:

Does the default view have DXL layout?

How many sections in shared edit?

When was the last time you baselined to clear out history?

Ken.

SystemAdmin - Fri Oct 23 09:04:10 EDT 2009
Thanks for the reply Ken,

I am meeting with them ~9:00 A.M. EST, so will dig with this input.
I do believe that they have extensive layout DXL incorportated to make all the linking work from the various projects that are feeding not only the template project, but also in the new project and in "some" of the views in the new project. Fortunatly, it is happening on a couple of specific modules within certain views, and this is helping hunt down the problem.
Not sure about how many sections for sharing yet, will work that item this morning.
Same thing for last baseline, however, since it is a spanking brand new project, not likely part of this situation. Still, will check that over with the project team of System Engineers as well.

Again, thanks for the input..., this is one of the reasons I like the DOORS Forum from past experience. I am glad to see that at least some form of it is building again on the IBM site... even though it has taken months and now almost a year for significant numbers of us with experience to track it down in the IBM support galaxy.....

greg

mcnairk - Fri Oct 23 09:04:10 EDT 2009
Try converting the dynamic DXL layout columns to DXL attributes, which are usually much faster.

Ken.

SystemAdmin - Fri Oct 23 09:04:10 EDT 2009
Thanks for the reply Ken,

I am meeting with them ~9:00 A.M. EST, so will dig with this input.
I do believe that they have extensive layout DXL incorportated to make all the linking work from the various projects that are feeding not only the template project, but also in the new project and in "some" of the views in the new project. Fortunatly, it is happening on a couple of specific modules within certain views, and this is helping hunt down the problem.
Not sure about how many sections for sharing yet, will work that item this morning.
Same thing for last baseline, however, since it is a spanking brand new project, not likely part of this situation. Still, will check that over with the project team of System Engineers as well.

Again, thanks for the input..., this is one of the reasons I like the DOORS Forum from past experience. I am glad to see that at least some form of it is building again on the IBM site... even though it has taken months and now almost a year for significant numbers of us with experience to track it down in the IBM support galaxy.....

greg

SystemAdmin - Fri Oct 23 14:50:39 EDT 2009
of course...
today...
they all had "more important things to do"... and issue has not repeated today.

alas...i will not have good feedback for posting here until sometime next week, when the same group of shared edit users all get logged back in and then someone on the project experiences the "slowness" again, if at all, there seems to be some difficulty pinning this issue down, and creating repeatability and makes it more fun than you can imagine...HAH!!!

I assure those of you looking here that I will post when we get to the bottom of it all.

Cheers... TGIF...

gsdguy

SystemAdmin - Wed Dec 02 14:26:13 EST 2009
This is an update to this slow performance issue.

In the last 3 weeks we had another round of Very Slow DOORS performance with a specific group of users on the same project and modules as back in October.

This time I was able to ensure the network communication to & from the other remote building was functioning normal with IT Dept. assistance.
DOORS server was also verified to only be at 30% of CPU max use during this episode.

Next it was discovered that the issue was nearly non-existent from my own pc, which had 1.5 GByte RAM, however one user was working from a walk-up pc and at the same time working via remote desktop back to his pc at my same building.
He was able to work using remote to his pc, with little impact, but not able to work in DOORS on the walk-up pc.
I was able to use Windows Task Manager Performance monitor to determine that when working in the same project modules from my own pc it was requiring approx. 700 MBytes of RAM in order to display any of the views they were having trouble with however, they would work for me.
After checking the walk-up pc RAM, it only had 512 MByte RAM and was pegging the CPU at 100 %. This was also the case on another user pc at the remote building, where he only had 1 GByte RAM, which was not not enough.
We have seen that Windows XP Professional SP2 & SP3 actually uses 450 MByte RAM just to run a blank desktop. After running DOORS it was 520 MByte RAM used, then working in the new project needing another 700 MBytes, it was pegging his CPU at 100% and exceeding his pc RAM available as well.
We have now upgraded (5) key users "DOORS Project Admins" computers to 3 GBytes RAM.
No negative performance issues have been observed since the RAM upgrades.

SystemAdmin - Wed Dec 02 14:38:30 EST 2009
These findings actually make some sense, and since DOORS is a client heavy tool that performs alot of viewing & editing activity at the client and then sends changes back to the server.
Naturally it was first thought that it "must" be the network or the server and not initially easy to see that the desktop pc's have become underpowered.

Actually the pc RAM has been getting gobbled up this year especially since the MS Outlook 2007 upgrade in Spring of 2009 & then we upgraded to MS Office 2007 as well during the summer of 2009.
Actually the MS Office 2007 upgrade has only been sporadic and not all users have it yet. So this also has factored into trouble-shooting the issue. Of course the IT Dept. has known that other Windows PC software is grabbing more of the RAM and quickly pushing the use of any other software beyond the capability of what many existing desktop pc's may have available.
So another temporary fix option is to not try and run Outlook, Office & DOORS all at once. Many users don't like this since they become disconnected from the other project associates and may feel out of the loop while working in DOORS v9.1.