The OpenEdge DBA Files

The Smoking Gun

We got a call from a company that had been trying for months to find out how, where and why their system was slow. They had already spent thousands of dollars with system and OpenEdge consultants, all to no avail. ProTop found and reported the root cause in the first hour.

First thing first: record statistics

As we always do (and so should you!), we installed and configured ProTop to record as many statistics as possible for Progress and the operating system. As the first data points were coming in to the web portal, ProTop was already showing a few things worth digging into. (Quick note: most of the data shown below are available in the free version of ProTop, but this was a paid services engagement so some of the data and graphs shown below were provided by the commercial version of ProTop).

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SuperGeek Video Series: the -hash Parameter

The -hash parameter is one of those little-known, often misunderstood parameters that can cause you a LOT of pain if set incorrectly. Trust us, we’ve seen it kill performance on numerous occasions!

Check out the video below and JC’s blog post “The Smoking Gun” (2021-07-05) where he talks about a real-world production environment where they just couldn’t figure out why performance was sooooo bad!

 

 

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User Died, DB Crashed, Business MAD!

Anyone who has been around the OpenEdge world for a while has had to face the dreaded “User died holding shared memory latch. ABNORMAL SHUTDOWN” crash. While this sometimes happens as a result of a Progress OpenEdge bug, more often than not it’s a human error. Here are three key points to understand in order to minimize the chance of crashing your database when trying to terminate a shared memory client.

 

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ProTop Newsletter May 2021

Welcome to our monthly ProTop newsletter, where you’ll find out what’s new, tips and tricks and other cool ways to use both the free and commercial versions of ProTop.

In this month’s issue: Programmer Mode, and why every developer should have the free version of ProTop RT (Real Time) up on their screen when writing queries.

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