New in AM2005: AutoManager Server

Performance and stability improvements

In January 2005 the AutoManager R&D department started a project to enhance the software test methods used for the server software. This project aims at identifying problems that are typically hard to find using regular quality control procedures. Based on problem reports from customers, tools were developed to test specific parts of the software.

The early results revealed several problems that could be traced back to issues reported by customers, prompting a more details analyses to the software in a larger variety of external conditions (e.g. restricted availability of memory and transient network problems). At that point it was decided to postpone the AutoManager 2005 release and allow the R&D team to complete the project.

This has resulted in the identification of a number of server-related issues which were the cause of problems that occurred in the field and were hard or impossible to reproduce by QC. These problems include:

• Ghost documents
• Documents stuck in workflow
• Collections or Work Areas that could not be deleted or discarded for unclear reasons
• The EDM Server stopping unexpectedly on specific queries.

These problems occurred typically in situations of heavy loads or restricted resources (especially memory) available to the EDM Server.

As a result of this analyses, numerous improvements have been made with regards to memory management, error handling and fault tolerance of the database engine.

In March 2005 a defect was identified in the driver for the Oracle back-end. The symptoms are:

• Failure to process the write-ahead LOG files.
• The AM-Meridian server reports an error (HTIOError 802) and stops processing requests to avoid loss of information.

This defect was traced back to changes in the AutoManager 2004e1 release. A message was dispatched too all resellers advising not to use the AutoManager 2004e1 release in combination with Oracle. This issue has been addressed in the AutoManager 2005 release and a hotfix for AutoManager 2004e1 will be available.

Other improvements

• The Vault Consistency Wizard sometimes failed to rename the database in the final step with very large databases. This is now fixed. 19015 VCW fails to rename database
   
• Under certain circumstances the Vault Consistency Wizard could cause the EDM Server to crash on certain databases. This is now fixed.19211 VCW Crashed on vault with AM-Meridian 2004D
   
• In AutoManager 2004d a problem was introduced that during a Prepare for Backup operation the SQL driver did not replace the existing .BAK file, but appended to it. This is now fixed.19147 SQL Backup appends since 2004D
   
• When Unretiring a document the log would incorrectly show "Submitted working copy" or "Released". This is now fixed.19214 Unretire document writes wrong info to comments field
   
• If a vault was opened by any AutoManager client application (PowerUser, OfficeClient, AMFS) during import the resulting vault after import would be empty. This is now fixed.19867 Vault is completely empty after import
   
• If a document which was part of a static collection was revoked it was not completely removed from the database, resulting in a 'floating document'.19921 At Kepler, Vault is corrupted in two days.
   
• Performance of the AutoManager Server in version 2004e was lower than that of 2004d with certain actions like bringing documents under change and releasing them. Performance has been improved, close to what it was in version 2004D.19850 Performance issue with opening Inventor assemblies
   
• The "Edit in Application" privilege was required to be able to Release a document. This is now no longer the case.15666 DTS: Need "edit in application privilige" to release doc
   
• After upgrading a Vault, the default Roles would have been re-created in the Vault. This is now fixed.19388 Unwanted Roles after upgrade
   
• Performing multiple concurrent searches would cause the EDM Server to allocate a significant amount of memory (in the order of 5 to 15MB) depending on the size of the Vault for each search. This has now been improved, and the amount of memory for each search is now reduced to approximately one fifth of what it was before.19410 Server claim >10 MB of private bytes when creating a new object
   
• In Oracle Vaults having two memo fields on a single document could result in the memo content not being written to the database correct if both memo fields were changed in the same transaction. This is now fixed.20069 Server crash, HTIOError (802) ORA-01461: só é possível associar um valor LONG para inserir numa coluna LONG
   
• After deleting a document type with a name like "Folder" or "Document" the 'Explorer View' navigation could be removed from the Environment. This is now fixed.20407 Wrong AMClass deleted when deleting Document Type with the same name
   
• After removing all levels from a Field Path Relation in an Oracle vault with documents, the database driver would after a while return an SQL error. This is now fixed.20495 Delete FPR results in "Violation of PRIMARY KEY constraint 'PK__LOGFILES__164452B1'."