SAS EG 4.3 Slow Interface

[mrustemoglu]

Hi,

I'm working on a relativelt large scale EG project (80+ processes). As soon as the the project grew in size, I started experiencing a massive slow-down of the EG 4.3 user interface. Each time I'm trying to open a task or a data, EG freezes, and I observe a 25+ CPU usage in the Windows Task Manager. I practically cannot work on this project

The project is a local project running on a HP Ultrabook, Windows 7 32 Bit (Service Pack 1), CPU: Inten Core i5 1.6 GHz, memory: 4 GB

Your help on this would be much appreciated.

Regards,

M.R

[ChrisHemedinger]

If you mean that you have over 80 process flows, that's an extremely large project that might be too unwieldy.  If you mean that you have 80+ tasks/programs, then I think that's a reasonable size.  However, slowdowns can happen when your tasks produce large scale results such as large listings produced in HTML or SAS Report, or large graphs in ActiveX format that contain lots of data points.

Check the guidelines here:

10 tips for organizing your SAS Enterprise Guide projects - The SAS Dummy

SAS Enterprise Guide options: my favorite 5 - The SAS Dummy

You might also gain a better understanding of what's in your project by using this custom task:

How much time will your process flow take to run? - The SAS Dummy

Chris

[mrustemoglu]

Thanks Chris.

I have 80+ tasks, not process flows.

I tried your recommendations. Unfortunately they didn't worked out. EG freezes even without running any tasks. I did a quick seach on the community and figured out that my problem is very similar to what is reported in https://communities.sas.com/thread/14159?start=0&tstart=0. Unfortunately the resolution to that is not provided in that link

M.R.

[SASKiwi]

Do you have access to another PC with EG on it? If so does it exhibit the same performance problems? This would isolate whether it is a PC-specific problem or not. Trying it on a desktop as opposed to your laptop would be a good test.

4GB memory is a bit low. EG memory usage can easily creep up to 1GB or so by itself. The standard for EG where I work is 8GB to provide sufficient headroom.

[jakarman]

mrustemoglu started to mention a 32-bit PC with 32-bit W7.   This environment is limited to 31 bit pointers (2Gb) and of the 4Gb mostly just 3Gb is usuable do to reservations needed on other interfaces at OS-level.  Upgrading to 8Gb is useless without upgrading to a 64-bit OS.

The found track is mentioning using a 64-bit OS. Than the trouble there is indicating .Net versions and Dll's.
As Eguide is build in .Net the correct corresponding versions must be available. In that thread it states the .Net version is too high (4.0) causing performance problems in older versions of EGuide.  Upgrading Eguide should solve that.

Newer tools versions are supporting 64-bit type usage. The requirement will be that all needed drivers must be present as 64-bit versions also.

Most tools are stil good at the 32-bit versions running in a 64-bit OS environment. The benefits are coming from the OS part in that case.

Hmm looks to be becoming a whole upgrading traject.  

[ChrisHemedinger]

The project (as described) doesn't sound that big, and while it might run better on upgraded hardware, you should not expect the app to "freeze" as you've described.

You should track the issue with SAS Technical Support -- they can instruct you on how to gather further diagnostics to help see what's going on.  They might also ask you to test with some smaller projects -- do you see all projects running very slowly, or is it just this one project that is a problem?  What tasks are in the project?  What types of results?

Chris

[SASKiwi]

Yes, I should have mentioned we are using 64-bit EG where the extra memory is very useful. Regardless, our experience is that with EG and other usual desktop apps (mail, internet, MS Office etc) you can easily use close to 4GB memory.

[jakarman]

mrustemoglu  It would be nice to hear from you how you are proceeding with TS
When a solution is found that being shared to the community so we all learn off it.