I'm using a P4M, 1.8Ghz, 768MB RAM. I've added all of the objects from my database into a project. Any time I click on any of the objects, my machine's CPU goes to 100% for 90 - 120 seconds.

Perhaps it isn't expected that I'd add all of my objects to a project. However, so many of my objects are dependent on each other, this seems to me exactly the purpose of SQL Dependency Tracker.

If the performance of this beta is close to the anticipated performance of the release version, there is no way I could use this product for any serious database work.
JonRobertson
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Comments

8 comments

  • Bart Read
    Hi Jon,


    Thanks for reporting this. Unfortunately there is a known performance issue in the beta when clicking on the diagram (embarrassingly enough). We just had a rogue event in there, which has now been brought under control. You should find the final release is much quicker, however I'd be interested in knowing roughly how many objects are on your diagram if you could give me that information please? Then I can test SQL Dependency Tracker on a comparably sized database here and see how it performs, and if there are any other improvements we can make.


    Many thanks,
    Bart Read
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  • Dan J Archer
    Hi Jon,

    As another work around, in the beta it's possible to avoid this CPU thrashing after having added all objects to your project by clicking one in the Objects on Diagram list first, before you click on the diagram itself. The bug in question manifests when you select or deselect a large number of objects using either the diagram itself or the toolbar buttons. If you do your selection from the Objects on Diagram list (eg. Ctrl-A to select all) then it doesn't show up.

    As Bart says, this is a dumb bug and, rest assured, this will certainly be fixed for the final release. In our latest test builds it's already gone. Thanks for reporting it tho, and for your patience with the beta!

    All the best,
    Dan
    Dan J Archer
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  • JonRobertson
    Bart Read wrote:
    I'd be interested in knowing roughly how many objects are on your diagram if you could give me that information please? Then I can test SQL Dependency Tracker on a comparably sized database here and see how it performs, and if there are any other improvements we can make.
    Since that information is useful to you, it would be nice if the GUI had an easy way for me to determine how many objects are in the diagram. If it does, I can't find it.

    I exported to XML and grepped the number of <Object> occurrances. 4,223 objects, according to this method.

    I uploaded an exported PNG of my diagram to http://www.jonrobertson.net/DependencyTracker.png. I don't know about you, but that's just not very useful to me. Particularly when trying to navigate around is very slow (even using the diagram list, it isn't fast enough to be useful to me).

    By the way, it took my machine over half an hour to generate that diagram (Orthogonal). I wish I'd actually timed it. But it was definitely over 30 minutes.

    I'll echo other posts that I've read: When looking for a Dependency Tracker, I'm not looking for a fancy diagraming tool that'll let me bounce from one object to another. I'm looking for something that will let me easily and quickly determine what the dependencies are, and what affect removing a single constraint/column/table/stored proc/func/etc will have on the rest of the schema.
    JonRobertson
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  • Dan J Archer
    Hi Jon,

    Thanks for that. That's a serious database.

    Bugs in the beta aside, I can be honest and say you're working with an order of magnitude more objects at a time than we anticipated. I'd be interested to know how many people have to deal with such large schemas. We may need to try and squeeze in some optimisation to make things a bit more quicker for people in your position.

    You're quite right, orthogonal is lousy for such a gargantuan number of objects. It's an interesting view for smaller datasets, but we wouldn't recommend it for schemas of the magnitude you've got to deal with. That's probably not going to change for the final release. Perhaps we should make it a bit more obvious that some layouts are a Bad Plan for huge numbers of objects.

    Sounds like you're looking to analyse and record the impact of a potential change - this is one of the key (if not the key) tasks we're aiming to make easy with SQL Dependency Tracker. Perhaps you'd take a look at my post on this thread, and see what you think: http://www.red-gate.com/messageboard/vi ... php?t=2086

    Regards,

    Dan
    Dan J Archer
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  • alphadog
    Well, depending on how you did it, grepping on <object> tags could over-inflate the numbers, given that the tag <object> is used as a child of <uses> and of <used by>, which are children of <object> again.

    Grepping on <object> in general would actually give, I think, a general count of the number of links or dependencies.

    - alphadog
    alphadog
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  • JonRobertson
    alphadog wrote:
    Well, depending on how you did it, grepping on <object> tags could over-inflate the numbers, given that the tag <object> is used as a child of <uses> and of <used by>, which are children of <object> again.

    Grepping on <object> in general would actually give, I think, a general count of the number of links or dependencies.
    That makes complete sense. But I don't know how else to determine the number of objects in my diagram.

    I can easily report back the number of Tables, Procedures, etc, in the database. But I'm not clear on which objects SDT currently tracks.

    Running this query:
    select type, count&#40;*&#41; as &#91;Count&#93;
    from sysobjects
    group by type
    
    Gives these results:
    type Count       
    ---- ----------- 
    TR   23
    U    161
    F    281
    C    79
    S    19
    K    201
    D    468
    FN   4
    TF   2
    V    51
    P    147
    
    JonRobertson
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  • alphadog
    The only way I can think of knowing how many object RGDT sees would be maybe an xml query (xpath) on the export. Something like count(//Database/Object), which would be a count of <object>s attached to <database>.

    Unfortunately, my XML editor is on the fritz, so I can't verify if this is correct.

    - alphadog[/i]
    alphadog
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  • Dan J Archer
    We did want to add a count of objects in the database and on the diagram - sadly this is one of the small features that hasn't made this release. It's on the list for next time though!

    All the best,

    Dan

    ====================
    Dan J Archer
    SQL Dependency Tracker Project Lead
    Red Gate Software
    Dan J Archer
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