[sims] PARS and SIMS extremely slow when saving and opening data

[stanwell]

Hi,

 

I have had lots of reports of SIMS and PARS running slowly. One example I have seen myself is that sometimes when a teacher tries to save a register on PARS, it takes a long time. I've seen it take about 7 minutes and I'm told that it's taken over 25 minutes before. It used to take a couple of seconds...

 

The person who normally deals with SIMS and PARS is not well at the moment and won't be back in work for a while.

 

After looking at some other posts on this forum I have tried watching the Activity Monitor for our database, but I don't really know what I'm watching to be honest. I have seen the "Waiting Tasks" reach over 1600, don't know if that is normal or not. I have attached a couple of screen shots of the activity monitor with the processes list sorted by the "Block By" column. I don't know if anybody was stuck on saving when these screenshots were taken.

 

We are currently running SQL 2005 Enterprise and getting ready to upgrade to 2008.

 

 

Thanks,

 

Daniel

[stanwell]

Thank you for your reply. I have attached some screen shots of the query results. However again I'm not sure if it was running slow at the time. The best time to try this is in the morning. I don't know if these screen shots will tell you anything. I think a lot of the "Wait Resources" were CXPACKET or something similar this time. Because I have to run the query quickly, I didn't have enough time to look at the info on the activity monitor.

 

 

Thanks,

 

Dan

[stanwell]

First thing - you're on SQL 2005 SP2, you should patch it to SP4. SP3 contains fixes for blocking issues. Try this and see if it helps.

 

Scratch that - you should move to SQL 2008 as the SIMS platform is officially SQL 2008. You might not be able to get any support for your platform. I know there's a few people in the same boat, but you should be on SQL 2008 by now.

 

I actually installed 2008 this morning but we haven't migrated SIMS yet. We are hoping to do the migration sometime next week. I will monitor SIMS and PARS for a couple of days after the migration and let you know if it has solved the problem. Thank you for your help.

 

Daniel

[PhilNeal]

It's unlikely to be resolved through moving to SQL 2008. If you haven't done so please log a case.

[The_Windy_Miller]

Make sure you're using SQL 2008 Release 1 - Release 2 is not officially supported by SIMS at present

[stanwell]

Make sure you're using SQL 2008 Release 1 - Release 2 is not officially supported by SIMS at present

 

Thank you, how can I check this? Do you mean Service Pack 1 and 2 or is that something different?

[stanwell]

The query gives me this:

 

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (RTM) - 10.0.1600.22 (Intel X86) Jul 9 2008 14:43:34 Copyright © 1988-2008 Microsoft Corporation Enterprise Edition on Windows NT 5.2 (Build 3790: Service Pack 2)

[stanwell]

So am I right in thinking that I should install Service Pack 1 but NOT Service Pack 2? Edited January 10, 2011 by stanwell

[stanwell]

Eveything seems to be running a lot better now. We have migrated to SQL 2008, updated SIMS to the Autumn 2010 release and updated PARS to 2.451.

 

Thank you for your help.

 

Dan

[jenny_urey]

Eveything seems to be running a lot better now. We have migrated to SQL 2008, updated SIMS to the Autumn 2010 release and updated PARS to 2.451.

 

Thank you for your help.

 

Dan

 

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