Memory and CPU Usage with BCM

[Guest]

Having recently installed Business Contact Manger I am having problems with:
1) SQL Server 2005 is chewing up both the CPU and the memory on my machine
to the point of crippling it.
Memory Usage is just short of 1GB - ridiculous!
CPU Usage is fluctuating between 26% and 100% - mostly used by SQL2005

2) In BCM if I am looking at the Business Contacts in say a phone list view
the page keeps refreshing endlessly - I am assuming that this is a query
being executed on SQL 2005 but can find no way to put a stop to it in the
settings of the program. This means that you cannot scroll down the listing
to a different contact since everytime you let go of the scroll bar it
reverts back to the first record.

Does anyone know how to put an end to these problems that appear to be
related?
Thanks
Robert Carney

 

[Guest]

Robert,

Many BCM users have encountered the same issue. I just spent several weeks
trading email back and fort with Microsoft trying to resolve this ame issue.

Here are some of the things that I found/was told.

Minimize the number of items in your activities (History) This may not be
practical.

When Outlook 2007 SP1 is released it will provide a way to reduce the
frequency of polling of the BCM database. (Current set at 1 second)

Email auto linking is a huge culprit in terms of performance issues. We have
asked our users not to send any bulk email to autolinked clients during
business hours, rather they remote in after hours and send their bulk
notifications etc.

You can of course turn off auto linking and run it once a week or so.

I have tasked one of our developers to buld a VBA script to run email
autolinking as a schedled task on each users PC during silent hours. He is
working on this as we speak.

Here is what I found the most useful task:

If you are using the blown SQL Server 2005, run the SQL Server profiler
against your database while it is running.....only for sho controlled periods.

Run the resuting trace file trhrough the tuning Wizard and allow the wizard
to apply indexes (indices) as it feels it needs to.

When I tried to view the enitire Communications History before I did this it
took about 15 minutes to finsih cranking through and disply something.
Following this procedure it only took seconds.

I hope all of this helps. Feel free to conatct me if need be.

E Tenebris Lux

Mauler

 

[Guest]

Mauler:
Thanks very much for your detailed response.
It seems such a shame that MS did not allow us the tools to limit the amount
of memory that SQL 2005 Lite takes as they do in the normal SQL 2005!
Since writing that message the system seems to have settled down a bit, not
so much CPU churning as previously but the memory usage still tracks around
700MB - still ridiculous. What is more frustrating is that if you exit SBM
you would think that SQL 2005 would give up it's memory - or at least reduce
it's footprint - not so unfortunately. I have found that I can release the
memory by stopping SQL 2005 but SBM will not automatically restart it despite
the service being set to automatic!
Sometimes I can get away with restarting SQL 2005 and then starting SBM -
sometimes not and a full reboot is required.
Seems a shame that MS has come pretty close to developing a decent contact
manager but still has a ways to go - like enabling the user to generate a
letter from the contact card - but I don't want to go on a rant!
Thanks for taking the time to reply - much appreciated!
Robert

 

[Guest]

Robert,

SQL Server eats up as much memory as it can from the host computer. This is
apparently behaviour by design. Very disturnbing behaviour if you are using
SMB or running other process on the same machine. You can change this default
behaviour within SQL Server. There is not much point in a reboot to get it to
release the memory as it will consume it again over time.

We were very perplexed when we started using SQL server and have learned to
adapt.

I concur with your assessment of MS and BCM. based on the discussion I had
with the tech rep they are working on it.

Hope this helps.

Mauler

 

[Allen Weil]

I am having problems running Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager on my
laptop because SQL Server 2005 is using too many resources. It keeps giving
me out of memory and resources errors. If I uninstall SQL Server 2005 from
my main drive and re-install it on my external drive which is connected via
USB will my system run more efficiently?

 

[Lon Orenstein]

Allen:

No, don't do that. SQL (and all other programs) run in memory and it
doesn't matter where they're located on the hard drive. How much memory do
you have? If the answer is less than 2GB, you will improve performance a
lot with more RAM.

HTH,
Lon

___________________________________________________________
Lon Orenstein
pinpointtools, llc
(e-mail address removed)
Author of Outlook 2007 Business Contact Manager For Dummies
Author of the eBook: Moving from ACT! to Business Contact Manager
www.pinpointtools.com

 

[Joan]

Mauler,

I've read as much on BCM performance issues as I could search and your
comments are most helpful. I turned off Auto Linking in BCM, intending to do
this manually once a week, but the off/on/off process requires clicking and
can't run entirely during silent hours. The whole point of BCM (for me) is
auto linking, so I'd like to find a way to make this workable.

Do you have instructions for incresing the polling frequency from 1 sec to 1
minute in the registry? I have upgraded to SP1 but can't find any settings
for this. I'd like to try this as my next step.

If your VB scripts works, would you share it? Although I don't have VB on
my system, would VB reader be of use?

I'm on a new PC with XP Pro and Office 2007, implementing BCM for the first
time. I hope to resolve the performance issues and use the auto linking to
avoid dozens of subfolders as a filing system.

Many thanks,

Joan

 

[Lon Orenstein]

Joan:

We've asked the BCM Team to give us instructions on increasing the polling
frequency that they added in SP1 but so far, no dice.

Sat, any help here?

Thanks,
Lon

___________________________________________________________
Lon Orenstein
pinpointtools, llc
(e-mail address removed)
Author of Outlook 2007 Business Contact Manager For Dummies
Author of the eBook: Moving from ACT! to Business Contact Manager
www.pinpointtools.com

 

[Joan]

Lon,
Thanks for responding. It's nice to know people are out there and so
helpful.
I found the site for the BCM Team Blog. They say instructions for setting
the polling frequency will be in their next issue. The holidays have held up
notice because people are on vacation.
http://blogs.msdn.com/bcm/default.aspx

BTW, I have a copy of your "for Dummies" book.

Joan

 

[Joan]

Robert:
I found the tools we need to limit max memory usage by SQL. See my new post
dated 1/6/2008, Subject Line: "SQL Max Memory Defined" for more details.
Joan

 

[Joan]

Robert:
See my new post of 1/6/2008 for instructions on setting SQL Maximum Memory
use.
Joan

 

[Lon Orenstein]

Joan:

Welcome to the group -- it's great to have a geekette in the fray!

Lon
___________________________________________________________
Lon Orenstein
pinpointtools, llc
(e-mail address removed)
Author of Outlook 2007 Business Contact Manager For Dummies
Author of the eBook: Moving from ACT! to Business Contact Manager
www.pinpointtools.com