Timescale Data Entry Slowed by "As Late As Possible" Tasks

[Blue]

To support a requirement to allow planning in integral hours/month I am doing
TSV transactions in the Work field for each of 20+ Resources as assigned
(generally 2-5 each) to several hundred Tasks. Application calls for daily
values in the spanned days of the first and last months; monthly values in
between.

All reading transactions execute at a rate I would expect: hundreds of reads
(and associated interpretation code) per second. Writes: not so much--about
1/second. Through painstaking debugging, I discovered that the existence of
Task Finish "As Late As Possible" constraints is associated with the
slowness. When I eliminate all, write speeds become comparable to the read
speeds described above. I have not experimented to plot the exact
speed:number-of-ALAP relationship, nor its dependence on which Resources are
assigned to either the Task whose TSVs are being written or Tasks with ALAP
constraints.

I emphasize that it is the number of such ALAP Tasks in the Project anywhere
that governs the speed of TSV write transactions everywhere: not just to the
ALAP Tasks themselves which, in my example, numbered 20-30 of about 450.

I suspect some helpful but unwanted daily Resource
loading/leveling/accounting that Project is updating with every TSV write
and, although I'd gladly forgo such service for another 10-fold increase in
speed, I can live with the pace attained after I have removed all the ALAP
constraints. However, if there's a way to suppress (or postpone to manual
calculation later) whatever is this helpful service that would let me restore
my ALAP Tasks, I'd jump at it.

Pretty geeky. Thanks to anyone who can help.

 

[John]

To support a requirement to allow planning in integral hours/month I am doing
TSV transactions in the Work field for each of 20+ Resources as assigned
(generally 2-5 each) to several hundred Tasks. Application calls for daily
values in the spanned days of the first and last months; monthly values in
between.

All reading transactions execute at a rate I would expect: hundreds of reads
(and associated interpretation code) per second. Writes: not so much--about
1/second. Through painstaking debugging, I discovered that the existence of
Task Finish "As Late As Possible" constraints is associated with the
slowness. When I eliminate all, write speeds become comparable to the read
speeds described above. I have not experimented to plot the exact
speed:number-of-ALAP relationship, nor its dependence on which Resources are
assigned to either the Task whose TSVs are being written or Tasks with ALAP
constraints.

I emphasize that it is the number of such ALAP Tasks in the Project anywhere
that governs the speed of TSV write transactions everywhere: not just to the
ALAP Tasks themselves which, in my example, numbered 20-30 of about 450.

I suspect some helpful but unwanted daily Resource
loading/leveling/accounting that Project is updating with every TSV write
and, although I'd gladly forgo such service for another 10-fold increase in
speed, I can live with the pace attained after I have removed all the ALAP
constraints. However, if there's a way to suppress (or postpone to manual
calculation later) whatever is this helpful service that would let me restore
my ALAP Tasks, I'd jump at it.

Pretty geeky. Thanks to anyone who can help.

Blue,
Even though you have posted to the general Project newsgroup, (our
sister newsgroup, microsoft.public.project.developer is more appropriate
for this type of question), let me give you a quick answer.

I assume you are using a VBA procedure to do the updating. In that case,
I would first use the CalculateAll Method followed by the
OptionsCalculation = False, somewhere in the beginning of the procedure.
Then when all data is updated, you can set calculation to true.

Hope this helps.

John
Project MVP

 

[Blue]

John,

Thank you; that's exactly what I needed. I remain curious why having ALAP
Tasks increases the recalculation burden so dramatically, but you've cured my
ill. Thanks for the right-newsgroup tip, too.

Blue

 

[John]

John,

Thank you; that's exactly what I needed. I remain curious why having ALAP
Tasks increases the recalculation burden so dramatically, but you've cured my
ill. Thanks for the right-newsgroup tip, too.

Blue

Blue,
You're welcome and thanks for the feedback. I don't always ask why
Project does, or needs to do, something but if I find that calculation
burden is a hit on processing time, I automatically employ the technique
I described in my original response.

John
Project MVP

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Blue,

I would have thought a simple process would do it. Use a Flag field and
enter yes for all the ALAP tasks, then filter on this Flag. Select all the
tasks by clicking on the button above the ID column. Open Project/Task
Information/Advanced tab and select the constraint of ASAP and OK. Now do
your transaction and then repeat the Task Information steps to recover the
ALAP requirement. If you record 2 macros via Tools/Macro/Macros... one for
each change, it would be simple to execute from 2 tool buttons.

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP
See http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc for Project Tutorials