QTP as a system hog

[Pickering, John (NORBORD)]

Georgia is correct about MPE giving a process which has locked a resource
that other processes want more of the system. Knowing that, you should use
the least restrictive locking strategy that you can get away with.

Long ago I asked for an enhancement to Qtp to allow a different lock level
for each request in a run. Of course I suspect that this enhancement is
filed with all of my other requests in some bit bucket on Riverside Drive
:-( Don't start me on an enhancements rant!

The result of all this is that I have Qtp jobs which consist of several
separate runs. The first locks the files, selects the records of interest
and writes them to a subfile - no sorts, minimal access statements. The
second run does all the sorting, linking and hard work -- using set lock
file update so that there is no database contention. The second run writes
out the results to a subfile which the third run uses to update the
database. Takes more programmer work and a little more computer processing
but allows the sort of 10 minute task Georgia describes below to be run
during prime time without the long locks and whining users.

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	georgia miller [SMTP:georgia_miller@gfps.k12.mt.us]
> Sent:	Tuesday, April 18, 2000 6:02 PM
> To:	Dave Knispel; PowerHouse Listserv (new)
> Subject:	RE: QTP as a system hog
> 
> Dave,
> We are on HP3000 PH819.C3.  We have had this problem back to PH6.09.  We
> started having 
> this problem when MPE did their ques differently (don't know the version
> maybe around 3.0)  When a QTP process is hogging all the 
> machine resources is when there is a locking issue where more than one
> user is trying
> to get access to a file that is locked with QTP.  Even using SET LOCK FILE
> REQUEST doesn't
> help when users are trying to access the same file.  What we've found is
> that when MPE
> experiences a locking issue like this, where a user is locked out of a
> file, it keeps bumping
> up the number of resources for the user or process that has the file
> locked in an attempt
> to get the other user access sooner.  It keeps throughing resources at the
> offender until
> they have the entire machine resources.  No one else can do anything, even
> a simple
> MPE command until the process is done and the lock released.  Luckily this
> doesn't
> happen that often and when it does, the offending process finishes in
> about 10 minutes
> when it has all the machine resources going towards getting it done.
> 
> Making sure that SET LOCK FILE REQUEST on every QTP helps it from
> happening as
> much.  Also on systems with a lot of users, we try to limit the QTP
> processes to the
> evening when only a few users are on at a time.  When it does happen,
> everyone
> takes a break or starts catching up on email or something for a few
> minutes, 
> until the process finishes.  Also doing long extracts and sorting with
> Quiz instead
> of QTP helps.  I like writing QTP code better than Quiz when it comes to
> creating
> subiles and doing totals, etc.  But QTP causes problems because of the
> locking
> issues that is does that Quiz doesn't do.
> 
> Georgia Miller
> Great Falls Public Schools
> Great Falls, Montana
> ____________________________________________________________________
> 
> >To: powerh-l@lists.swau.edu; HP3000-L@RAVEN.UTC.EDU
> >From: Dave Knispel on Tue, Apr 18, 2000 11:27 AM
> >Subject: QTP as a system hog
> 
> >
> >To all,
> >
> >I'm working on an HP3000 using QTP version 8.19.C2.  I have a QTP process
> >that is reading a NM/KSAM file, doing a select, sorting, then writing out
> >two subfiles.  This process keeps taking over my system.  Even running in
> >the EQ it will take all available system resources so no one (even the
> folks
> >in a higher queue) can get any CPU time.
> >
> >Has anyone seen this before?  Any help would be appreciated.
> >
> >I'm posting this to both the HP3000-L and the Powerhouse-L.
> >
> >David Knispel
> >dave.knispel@frequencymarketing.com
> >Phone: 513-248-5029
> >Fax: 513-248-2672
> 
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
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