1.4

performance from PlanetPress Connect before looking into hardware upgrades or extra
PlanetPress Connect performance packs.
l
Job Sizes and Speed: In terms of pure output speed, it's important to first determine what
job size is expected, and adjust Scheduling Preferences accordingly. The basic rules are:
l If processing a small number of very large records (when each individual record is
composed of a large number of pages), more instances with an equal amount of
speed units is better. For hardware, RAM and Hard Drive speeds are most
important, since the smallest divisible part (the record) cannot be split on multiple
machines or even cores.
l If creating a very large number of small records (hundreds of thousands of 2-3 page
individual records, for instance), a smaller number of instances with a large number
of speed packs would be better. As for hardware, then the number of cores becomes
critical, whereas RAM and hard drive are secondary. Performance Packs, as well as
the MySQL instance being separate, would be helpful if your most powerful
machine starts struggling.
l Mix and match. For example, one instance prioritized for large jobs and the rest for
smaller, quicker jobs. Or the contrary. Or, whatever you want, really.
l
RAM Configuration: By default, each instance of the Merge Engine and Weaver Engine
is set to use 640MB of RAM. This means that regardless of speed units, if not enough
memory is available, output speed might not be as expected. Assuming that the machine
itself is not running any other software, the rule of thumb is the following: The total number
of used memory in the machine should be pretty much the maximum available (around
95%).
For each engine, it's necessary to modify the .ini file that controls its JAVA arguments.
Edit as follows:
l For the Merge Engine: see C:\Program Files\Objectif Lune\OL
Connect\MergeEngine\Mergeengine.ini
l For the Weaver Engine: see C:\Program Files\Objectif Lune\OL
Connect\weaverengine\Weaverengine.ini
l The parameters are -Xms640m for the minimum RAM size, -Xmx640m for the
maximum RAM size. Explaining Java arguments is beyond the scope of this
document. Please read references here, here and here for more details (fair
warning: these can get pretty technical!).
l
Template and data mapping optimization: Some functionality offered by the Designer
modules are very useful, and sometimes downright awesome, but can cause the
generation of records and of contents items to slow down due to their nature. Here are
some of them:
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