End users complain that occasionally Navision becomes sluggish. Is there a method to speed up the Navision? Thanks
There are seceral ways to speed up Navision, however, they all require more information that you provide 
/Lars
There are numerous possibilities. Lars is right, you would need to provide more details to find the probable cause. I will assume that you are using the Navision Database in the following. Try to isolate the problem by determining if it is just one or two users who experience the problem or if everyone is affected. You want to rule out hardware as the problem, to insure someone with a bad nic card isn’t logging in late in the day to perform some task, and all of a sudden everyone slows to a crawl all over the network. If it is only NF that is slow, then this may not be the case. Look for trends, certain users, certain time of day, day of week, day (date) of month, etc. If it is not a certain user or hardware related, and Navision Financials only, then you can focus your efforts on Navision Financials. Try the easy things first: Do you have enough database space. If you have one or more large database files, you may want to span them over multiple drives to speed up things quite a bit (make sure to follow the backup and restore procedures carefully during spanning to insure that the file is evenly distributed for best results.) If the database file(s) are relatively small, and/or spanned effectively, then you have some work to do. Remember that the Navision Database is optimized and inherently speedy. If you can determine what areas of the application in which the users are working when they experience the slowdown, then look for modifications in these areas. Some common things to look for, mostly related to keys, include: too many or too few keys, inefficient keys, etc. You want to be sure that you are using the right key for the job. Just like a door key, others might work, but they may take a great deal more work than the correct key. This may be the case if the slow process involves searching or compiling records. If you have too many keys active in a table, then inserting records may be slow – like searching for the right key on a key ring that contains fifty keys. Make sure that you have specified (SETCURRENTKEY) the most efficient key prior to any SETFILTER or SETRANGE commands, etc. I do not mean to sound disrespectful to your developers, but start with modified code and tables first in order to shorten your search. As Lars said, it could be many things, but I tried to give you a few “common” areas to with which to start. Best of luck. Phil Simonson philsimonson@yahoo.com Edited by - Phil Simonson on 8/25/00 7:10:36 PM
One area to look into is the disk configuration. RAID 5 is NOT good. Best regards, Emil
You can also get your network audited : An overloaded, slow or unreliable network could cause this problem. Try also tuning the options of your Navision server (ie: maybe increasing your database cache,etc,etc…) tarek_demiati@ureach.com
I appreciate the feedback on the Navision topic. Aston originally set us up. Now the database is here in house. As administrator I’ve had to slowly become involved with Navision. It’s proprietary…even though SQl looms in the future. I have a strong impression that the issue revolves with the cache. It would be my understanding that to increase cache would involve some mathematics and once that formulae is completed that Navision would have to be re installed to set up the fresh cache statistic. If there is any imput on the above that would be greatly appreciated. There is one other small issue that has been tormenting this company for a year. It’s getting our ‘commission report’ to behave optimally. We’ve had a real struggle with our ‘partner’ and somehow they can’t get it right. My boss indicates that somewhere ‘outthere’ there must be a solution and that someone holds the ‘key’. I’m just imparting the bosses immence frustration with this issue. I take it to heart in that I persuaded him to go with Navision as SAP would be too enourmous for this company. Anyway, I thank everyone for assissting this overwhemled administrator. Thanks. Chu
Again, be a little more specific, please. “getting our ‘commission report’ to behave optimally” is not really a question, is it? What’s the problem? What has been done? What do you want? John
You might get your Navision partner to check out the different parameters on the database. For instance, if your DBMS cache on the database is set to 8MB it probably should be a lot bigger (see Tarek´s answers and your own impressions). Things to take in to consideration is free space on the disc compared to cache size. Then you (or your Navision-partner) have to reinstall the service with the new parameters etc. etc. Regarding the commission report - if optimally means faster, the solution to the first issue might be the solution to the second issue. If the report is incorrect, it’s another matter. Good Luck
You don’t need to reinstall the service to change the DBMS cache. You need to stop the service, enter “cache=xxxxx”(in bytes)in the Startup Parameter box in the services window, then restart the service. There is a formula for setting this cache, or, you can just use about 2/3 of the RAM installed on the server. Simon
Sorry, of course Simon is right about not having to installasservice again. By the way I have experienced something funny regarding starting databases up via shortcuts compared to running them as “proper” services. It seems to be working faster when not running under services. It´s especially clear when you are running multiple databases on the same server. It might be a coincidence, but I don’t think so. Has anybody else experienced the same?
Running Navision without running a Service? Is this suicide? I mean…what are services for unless they are to be running. If services are not running would that not affect the enterprise wide network and the clients dependant on services? Very interesting comment. It would seems that our Citrix clients running remotely would be adversely affected without the Financial Service running. Thanks
I did’nt meant not running it as a service at all, but rather not running it from control panel/services, but creating a shortcut to a CMD-file looking like this: server database=e:\servdir\Bas1.FDB,NETTYPE=TCP,SERVERNAME=NF_BAS with installasservice as an additional parameter first time you run it. I dont know if citrix clients would be affected (I don’t even know if this shortcut topic, which I brought up in this tread even belongs in this dicussion…)
Speed: You should be using TCP on the Navision-server. But of course you are. Too many keys on the tables can affect speed, and wrong keys on reports could also be the case with your commission-report-problem. Very often problems are solved with the right keys. About running as a service - or not - I really don’t believe it to make any difference in speed, because it makes no difference if you start the server with the installasservice - or you start from control panel. It’s the same. In old days, Navision didn’t support the “installasservice” - and it was just running “in a window” on NT - and you always had to log on to the server to start the program - but it made no difference in speed. Hope you have solved your problem, so that we can have one more satisfied Navision-customer!