Question

Great Plains Smartlist slow response

Asked by: Taedog

Fighting a real tough performance issue.

Have a virtual environment: ESX 3.5
Have Citrix installed on virtual machines: xap servers 03 and 04
Have SQL 2008 installed on a virtual machine
Have Great Plains installed

Everything works fine with one exceptions the Smartlist application in Great Plains runs VERY slow.

We can login to the Xap server and query 100k records in 8 seconds
We can login to the SQL server and query 100k records in 8 seconds
When the user login's to Great Plains and runs the EXACT query thru Smartlist it takes 10 minutes.

When first looked into the infrastructure to see if something was something wrong.

When we run the first two queries (xap and SQL) the environment barely moves. No network latency, low i/o on stroage (HP ISCSI SAN BTW), no cpu spikes, no paging) nothing.

When the query runs thru Great Plains Smartlist we see the CPU spike (on Citrix xap servers) and tremendous I/O request on the SQL Server.

Any help would be much appreciated.

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Asked On
2009-09-19 at 03:32:55ID24745383
Tags

Great Plains SQL Smartlist VMWare Citrix

Topics

MS Dynamics GP

,

Citrix

,

SQL Server 2008

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
16

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Answers

 

by: sendowPosted on 2009-09-19 at 06:30:50ID: 25373016

Hi,

Let me try and save you some time and frustration.  If you need to query more than 1,000 records from GP, SmartList is not the right tool.  As you have observed, it is relatively slow, and it just wasn't designed to handle large result sets.  It is fantastic for simple inquiries, but just isn't the proper tool to query or export large amounts of data.   And even if you use it to query more than 1,000 records, you can't do any direct analysis, so you have to export it anyway, which again, is going to be very slow for more than 1,000 records.

I would recommend considering the following options:

1) Excel Report Builder:  This tool is available in GP 10 (I don't know if it has to be licensed separately or not, and I don't know if it is available in GP 9), and creates a SQL data connection in Excel to query data directly from the GP database.  This bypasses the GP application for the queries, and gives you fast, direct access to GP data.  You can build queries using the Excel Report Builder tool, and even customize the queries from within the Excel file.  Just be careful to save any analysis or changes to a separate, non-connected file, as the data will refresh, and you could lose your changes to the file.

2) SQL Reporting Services:  If you are looking to query 100k records, I'm assuming you don't need all of that raw data, but rather a summary or an analysis of that data.  If that is the case, I would recommend considering developing a SQL Reporting Services report that does the analysis or summarization with views and stored procedures, and then displays the results to the user as a report.  It will be much faster than exporting data and manually aggregating or analyzing it.

3) SSIS:  If you really do need the 100k records of raw data, I would recommend using SQL Server Integration Services to export the data.  SSIS is shockingly fast, endlessly flexible, and allows you to export directly to the file format of your choice.


Let me know if this addresses your concern.  If you have any more specifics or follow up questions, please let me know.

Thanks,

Steve Endow
Dynamics GP Certified Trainer
Dynamics GP Certified Solution Professional

 

by: TaedogPosted on 2009-09-19 at 07:18:54ID: 25373120

Well it's too late for the time and frustration.

We are the infrastructure provider and the client and the 3rd party GP have an expectation that they should be able to query any number of records with near equal response to a SQL query.

We have spent over 400 hours on this problem looking into the infrastructure and defending the network, storage, virtualization, citrx, OS, SQL config, etc.

They client feels it must be the virtualization that is causing the problem. We feel we will see some marginal improvement if we do physical. We did set up a lab of physical, but was able to beat the physical results on the SQL queries with virtual solution over physical. (Believe it or not!) Of course, no smartlist in that test.

Is there an 'official' resource we can reference that will help the client (and ultimately their users) on correct expectations?

They have 25 users and every time they do User Acceptance Testing the performance crashes. (Think 25 users querying Smartlist with 100k records all within a 5 minute timeframe)

In perception hell . . .

 

by: sendowPosted on 2009-09-19 at 09:53:43ID: 25373649

Hi,

Wow, you have my sympathy.  A 25 user GP environment shouldnot have performance issues, and probably does not have performanceissues, just expectation issues.

Requiring GP to query the samesmartlist with 100k records by 25 user simultaneously is a terrible UATrequirement.   It's pure fantasy.  It's like demanding that a HondaCivic transport 25 NFL linebackers at 100 miles per hour whileoff-roading.  It just wasn't designed for that, and "wanting" or"expecting" it to work won't magically make it work.  The results arepredictable and physics will win every time.

If there is abusiness requirement that 25 users need to simultaneously query100k of data (clearly not a true requirement, just a fantasy testscenario), a different tool needs to be used.  Whoever believed orclaimed that SmartList is the proper way to conduct such a test needsto attend Dynamics GP training to learn more about the product.

Iwould strongly recommend trying Excel Report Builder to see if that canquell their concerns.  I have never done that large of a test withExcel Report Builder, but it at least has a chance at performing betterthan SmartLists.

Again, I reiterate, if you need to query morethan 1,000 records on a regular basis, you should not be usingSmartLists--you should be using a better, more powerful, more effectivetool.  Sure, you can get it to spit out 10k or 100k, but that isn'twhat it is designed to do.  Please explain this to your management.

Iwould be happy to get concurring opinions from other highly experienced Dynamics GPCertified Trainers, Dynamics GP Certified Solution Professionals, andMicrosoft MVPs.  It's a ridiculous requirement.

Thanks,

Steve Endow
Dynamics GP Certified Trainer
Dynamics GP Certified Solution Professional

 

by: sendowPosted on 2009-09-19 at 09:55:49ID: 25373657

Sorry, not sure why a lot of my spaces got removed from my prior post...

 

by: TaedogPosted on 2009-09-19 at 17:11:46ID: 25375373

It would be nice to get real world results on what 1k records response is in SmartList on physical servers. I know a lot of variables, but at least we could demonstrate we are in the park.

BTW you rock. I can't believe I've never used this before!

 

by: sendowPosted on 2009-09-19 at 21:49:08ID: 25375908

Hi,

Unfortunately, all of my GP servers are virtual as well, running on Hyper-V on Windows 2008.  But attached are two SmartList benchmarks that I ran directly on a client's SQL Server machine.  You can run a test on your SQL Server, and then on a terminal server / client machine.

The performance appeared to be very linear as the number of records increased, so you should see pretty consistent results.

Let me know how your numbers compare.

Thanks,

Steve Endow
Dynamics GP Certified Trainer
Dynamics GP Certified Solution Professional

 

by: sendowPosted on 2009-09-19 at 21:51:17ID: 25375912

Excel file attached.

 

by: TaedogPosted on 2009-09-20 at 05:33:48ID: 25376986

Sendow,

This is great! Just so I'm sure, these are times running a Smartlist within GP?

 

by: TaedogPosted on 2009-09-20 at 05:50:34ID: 25377035

The reason I ask is when we run the query on the SQL server or Citrix machines we see great results. It's when we run the queries within the application that the performance goes down the tubes.

So, the excel file you uploaded shows the times running a smartlist query from within the application, correct?

 

by: sendowPosted on 2009-09-20 at 09:35:20ID: 25377791

Hi,

Correct, these times are from within SmartList in GP 9 on the physical SQL Server machine, run remotely via RDP.  Your specific times may vary due to factors such as database size, index status, and the fact that my SmartLists may have had sorts or a few additional fields added.

Comparing the time it takes to retrieve data in SmartList vs. SQL Management Studio is a useless comparison.  SQL Management Studio is a very specialized, dedicated tool using very low level, highly optimized data retrieval and display techniques that are designed for large amounts of data.  Whereas GP is using high level data retrieval and display techniques that are being run through a relatively slow proprietary scripting engine (the GP app) that was not designed for retrieving or displaying large amounts of data.

If someone is asking you to make the performance of SmartLists match that of SQL Management Studio, they don't understand application architecture and design, and they don't understand how GP works.

Thanks,

Steve Endow
Dynamics GP Certified Trainer
Dynamics GP Certified Solution Professional

 

by: TaedogPosted on 2009-09-20 at 14:18:15ID: 25379005

hmmmm, Ok, then we do have something going wrong. When we run it with SQL management studio we get 15k records in 9 seconds. When we run it with smartlist it takes 16 minutes. Compared to your time of 35-172 seconds seems like we are still off. We'll do some comparison testing and post back.

 

by: sendowPosted on 2009-09-20 at 14:27:02ID: 25379040

Ya, in that case, 16 mins for 15k rows does seem excessive. Are you running the SmartList on your SQL Server VM?

 

by: TaedogPosted on 2009-09-20 at 14:32:11ID: 25379062

user is logging into xap ser were GP is pubhlished they, are then running the SL from that interface.

 

by: sendowPosted on 2009-09-20 at 16:21:46ID: 25379444

I would recommend trying the SmartList from the SQL Server.  That's where my numbers came from, and would be a good place to start to see if you have a problem at the SQL Server itself, or if it is only at the application servers that performance is an issue.

 

by: sendowPosted on 2009-09-24 at 11:12:21ID: 25416105

Hi,

Based on our e-mail conversation, you performed a SQL Profiler trace of the specific SmartLists that were slow, and you found  that the SmartLists were querying Analytical Accounting tables and calling Analytical Accounting stored procedures behind the scenes, causing a significant performance issue.

Removing the AA related columns from the SmartList did not improve performance; however, modifying the Dynamics.set file so that the Analytical Accounting module was not loaded did result in a dramatic improvement in performance, with SmartList times returning to "normal" compared to a baseline GP system.

Thanks,

Steve

 

by: TaedogPosted on 2009-09-24 at 16:28:04ID: 31630922

Why haven't I used this service before?

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