GUI Refresh Problem

mdolan

I have installed Pro 5.1.0.2781 on a Windows 2000 Standard server. The GUI never updates the Activity History or In Progress tab for the local server. The circular icon on the server connection just spins and spins. The Jobs tab has entries in it and is updated.

I have another Windows 2003 Standard server that has Pro on it and can connect to the Win2000 server and it does shows the Activity History, Progress and Job entries.

Any idea what would cause this?

Thanks,
Matt

Jason Cook

Hi Matt,

When a server is first registered, the GUI will pull all activity history from the SQL Backup data store, and also from the msdb database in SQL Server. It collates this information together to populate the list shown in the GUI.

If you have a significant amount of data (tens of thousands of entries), this can take a while to collate, which will result in the spinning behaviour described.

There are two possible solutions to this:

- Leave the GUI open while the Activity History is collated. Once this has been done, it should not need to pull in all the information again.

- Alternatively, you can trim the backup and restore history, using the settings in the "Options" dialog. While this will reduce the time for the activity history to be collated, the old history will no longer be available.

Hope that helps,
Jason

mdolan

Jason,
Do you have an estimate on "it can take a while to collate"? This SQL Server 2000 box has been running since 2002. It's been over an hour already and SQL Backup is grabing every cycle the SQL Server service isn't using. The box has been running at 100%.
Cheers,
Matt

Jason Cook

To get an idea of how long the task will take to execute, you can perform the following calculation:

* Get the current size of the "msdb" database's MDF file.
* Navigate to "C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Red Gate\SQL Backup\Server Data" (where <username> is your account name), and get the current size of the last database to be modified (which should be your SQL Server 2000 server).

You can work out the proportion done so far by dividing the second size by the first (since the final datastore size should be in the same ballpark as the msdb size), and then use that to work out how long it might take.

I'm afraid that's the best approximation that we can offer at this time without getting into the depths of probing the various tables used by SQL Server and SQL Backup (which would add additional load to the server).

If you have hundreds of thousands of rows in your msdb backup and restore tables, a couple of hours processing time would not be uncommon, given the sheer quantity of data that SQL Backup is having to handle. Fortunately this is a one-time cost for a given user, so you shouldn't have the same delay in the future.

I've also passed on a request to our development team for them to add progress indications when the GUI is pulling the activity history from the datastore or from SQL Server, so hopefully that will be included in a future release to make life easier.

Hope that helps,
Jason

mdolan

Hello Jason,
It only took 3 hours after I changed the options to save/show 60 days of backup.

There is a problem though with letting it go that long. I have a command line log backup routine that runs across all 70 database on the server. It was blocked from running during the 3 hours. Maybe something else to pass along to the code geeks.

Regards,
Matt