Please STOP auto-refresh!

PDinCA

I know I've asked for this before, AND added a request to Uservoice, but after six YEARS of constantly being annoyed and LOSING TIME while reviewing the Activity History BECAUSE OF THE DARNED AUTO-REFRESH, could you please, like Microsoft so kindly gives in Profiler, GIVE US AN OPTION IN THE VIEW MENU TO STOP AUTO-REFRESH, PLEASE!

Sorry, just got another time-waster auto-refresh and I'm a bit peeved that I have to take a lot longer to do a simple thing than I should.

THANKS in advance.

Eddie D

Hi

Thank you for your forum post.

A support call has been created for you the call reference is 8828. I have added the details of the support call and this forum post to an existing Bug Report / Feature Request whose reference is SB-3123. I will request the SQL Backup Product Manager to review SB-3123.

I will also provide an update to you from our call logging system.

Many Thanks
Eddie

DonFerguson

I second that request. I do have a cluegy work around but agree it would be better if they stop running auto refresh and turn off client side caching altogether. It's much faster to just query the data you need from the server when you need it. Especially when you have many instances and databases.

Here is the work around: Create a group for each instance and put the instance in that group.

I know, this is a real pain to do, but at least auto refresh does not kick in until you open the given group.

PDinCA

Although Eddie sent me an email to which I replied very swiftly, SILENCE has ensued, sadly...

Eddie Davis (Support)
Nov 29 09:48 (GMT)

Hi

This is an undocumented feature which allows SQL Backup users to disable the timeline component of the SQL Backup GUI. By enabling this feature, you may experience improved performance of GUI.

If you wish use this feature, please follow the instructions:

To disable the time line, close the SQL Backup GUI and add the following registry key on the machine where the GUI is installed: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Red Gate\SQL Backup\Client (please note, you may need to create the 'Client' folder).
Create a new string value called DisableTimelineItemRequests and set the value to = 1 or true

Restart the SQL Backup Agent service for each of the registered servers.
Open the SQL Backup GUI and see if the performance has improved in populating the registered servers.
Once the spinning wheel has stopped, it appears that the registered server is not connected. You will need to expand the registered server to see a successful connection and to see entries in the Activity History.

KNOWN ISSUES

Upon opening the GUI and once the registered server or servers has completed loading, it appears that the registered server is not connected. You will need to expand the registered server to see a successful connection and to see entries in the Activity History or the other bottom grid items.

When navigating through the databases listed for a registered server, you may experience that the entries in the Activity History disappear. Simply click on another server or database and then click back to the original server or database to reload the Activity History or the other bottom grid items.

Many Thanks
Eddie Davis
Technical Support Engineer
Red Gate Software Ltd

My Reply:

Thanks for the info BUT that doesn't address the issue at hand. If you refer to the behavior cited in Profiler, the top pane continues to function with auto-scroll turned off. The lower pane is then static, allowing the user to choose which activities to view. The auto UPDATE of the chronological pane should continue, just DON'T move the lower pane - that is what constitutes a huge time waster when paging through the Activity History, as in: I scroll down to the activity I'm interested in, then, having found the group of backups to investigate, along comes auto-refresh and resets the list to the top - stop THAT!

Hope this clarifies.

Referring to my final sentence, above, DOES MY REPLY CLARIFY THINGS?

Is this thread dead?

Is Support Case 8828 dead?

This is still causing issues as I cannot research an ongoing remote file erase issue, support case 10148, while this dumb refresh goes on sticking it to me by presenting the latest activity in my face all the time... Yes, Eddie has provided an "undocumented" workaround, but is that the best there is - turn off ALL refresh when only the lower pane refresh should be togglable? Not exactly desirable for everyday usage, IMO.

Yes, I'm a bit peevish because I've been using SQL Backup seems like since forever, and this ONE pain in the rear behavior is still a pain in the rear after how many years? Five? Six? Seven? Lost count...

"SQL Profiler behaves better than SQL Backup" - is that a statement to live down or what?

Colin Millerchip

Hi PDinCA,

Sorry for the delay, I can confirm that we understand the scenario you've described. I'm currently working on SQL Backup planning, and this is on my list of things to be looked into.

Best regards,


Colin.

PDinCA

Thanks, Colin, good news indeed.

Cheers!

Eddie D

Hi PDinCA,

With regards to support call reference 8828. This call is on hold waiting for a bug fix, two bug fixes actually. The bug reference numbers are SB-3123 and SB-4400.

SB-3123 - Is an enhancement for SQL Backup users to be able to configure the GUI refresh rate.

SB-4400 - SQL Backup GUI fails or very slow to load backup history.

I understand your frustration, the near constant refreshing and poor performance loading backup / activity history is well known to me. Small improvements have been made since this style of GUI was introduced in SQL Backup V5, but further GUI work is still required.

Many Thanks
Eddie

rayherring

I could live with the auto-refresh if I could just figure out how to access the history to create custom reports.

I want to query the history directly to determine things such as how the duration, raw size, and compressed size of the t-log backups varies through the day.

I can query MSDB to get some of the information I need but right now the only way I see to get the Raw and Compressed size is to laboriously page through the constantly updating GUI which does not even sort in a useful order. I.e., if you sort by Type then the Date is unordered. If you sort by date, then the Full and Diffs are hard to find.

Direct, Read Access to the history database would solve this issue.

Colin Millerchip

When the SQL Backup UI downloads the activity history from the SQL servers that are being backed up, it caches this in a SQL Lite database.

This is stored in C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Red Gate\SQL Backup\Server Data\1.dat

I’ve used tools like Database .NET ( http://fishcodelib.com/Database.htm - disclaimer: nothing to do with us) to query this. The activityhistory table has the data that’s likely to be of interest.

Please note that this database schema is not a managed schema, and whilst it’s unlikely that it’ll change we can’t commit to not making changes that might break any custom integration done against them.

Best regards,


Colin.