[pass] Producing School Reports - Slow...

[asprisa]

Hi Guys,

 

Just wondered if there was anyone who may have had the same issue as me with WCBS PASS whilst running reports.

 

Basically we have installed PASS this year, after months of agro, and constantly slow performance, I have moved PASS to a new server (4 x Quad Cores, 12GB RAM, 15k SAS drives, Server 2008R2, SQL 2008 Full Edition), but the same issue persists, when I run a report it can take between 1 minute and 6 seconds and 3 Minutes 16 Seconds to display a report for a relativley small bunch of students, on SIMS this would take seconds.

 

I have run a trace on the SQL server and run several index tuning tasks, there is still no difference. When running a trace the SQL transactions seem to come through in small, slow bursts from the main application, which i find concerning.

 

It is also worth noting that if you click on the application during the report building process the application will freeze and crash. (On both the old installation and the new installation)

 

Any thoughts?

Edited December 13, 2010 by asprisa

[ZeroHour]

BTW we have the same issues. It looks like the client does all the actual processing/work and is single threaded so only 50% usage.

The joy of the MIS that is pass. Our MIS people are screaming at us to fix it but we cant see what else to do and if your setup is slow with all that hardware there is nothing we can do.

[asprisa]

I kind of expected someone to say that, there is only so much you can do to a poorly built piece of software before throwing it out of a window!

 

Thanks for replying!

[ZeroHour]

I kind of expected someone to say that, there is only so much you can do to a poorly built piece of software before throwing it out of a window!

 

Thanks for replying!

 

I am glad you posted it tbh as at least we know its probably not our setup.

What client OS are you using?

[asprisa]

We are using primarily Windows XP Clients, Although I have tested it on a Windows 7 Professional N laptop with the same results.

 

I think it might be easier to go to pen and paper next year!

[bsm78]

Its all in the building of the reports and the number of tables you are pulling from. I did thier advanced reporting workshop and managed to turn 1 report that tooks 10 minutes to print into 1. It was very worthwhile.

[mark-h]

How come it takes so long to print student timetables?! Built in reports should be quick, right?

[1066girl]

Sorry to revive an old thread but we continue to have massive speed/performance issues with PASS and so I am keen to speak with other schools about their experiences.

 

WCBS are keen to point the performance issues at our infrastructure, but over the last 12 months we have upgraded the server hardware, upgraded from Win Server 2008 to 2012 r2, replaced the finance switch, upgraded the backbone between Finance and the server room from copper to fibre, upgraded to SQL 2014, upgraded all the PASS modules, replaced all the client hardware, got rid of CC4 clients, etc yet it is as bad as ever. We have also adopted iSAMS for much of the MIS functionality (other than billing) and moved the SALTO printing off PASS. I am midway through moving the shop off the system, but none of this seems to make any difference to the performance.

 

The Finance manager was working on PASS over a weekend, with nobody else on the system and it constantly froze and "blue disked" as she described it.

 

The Finance Director won't hear of moving away from PASS despite it being practically unusable so I am keen to speak to other schools as she says every school she talks to uses PASS and they have no performance or speed issues. Running billing runs (we are a boarding school), payroll, end of quarter reconciliation reports, etc in PASS makes PASS unusable for the rest of Finance! The latest request is for us to basically re-implement PASS from scratch - new installation, reconfigure system, no old data migrated, etc.

 

Anyone managed to find the magic formula??

 

Thanks