Under the Hood

Good Ideas!

With the release of Autodesk Vault 2014 we see a number of the IdeaStation postings from the last year being implemented. Obviously we would love to implement every suggestion (well, maybe not EVERY suggestion) but we are off to a good start with 12 customer requests making the cut, which at the time of defining the release represented a good percentage of the total number. 

Over the coming weeks we will detail a number of the new enhancements in Vault 2014 but some of those we can cross of the IdeaStation list include the hugely popular “improvements to job processor” request, 4 Revit improvements and the seemingly obvious iFeature support.

Moving forward with the IdeaStation concept we hope to increase the number of implemented solutions with each release – looking at the current projections we have 13 ideas accepted and a large number (71) under consideration for future releases.  If your idea didn’t make it – hang in there, if you have a new idea go and post it – we really do build this product for you!

- Allan

Photo: crdotx

The Last Word on Tables (WikiHelp and Revision Tables)

Over the last week or so we have covered some of the more advanced approaches to managing your revision tables in Vault including style and manual updates.  For a more complete overview of the revision table concepts and some revision on these advanced settings check the general usage page here and the advanced table configuration here.  

- Allan

Squeezing Your Files (Compression on transfer)

One of the new features available in the Vault 2013 products was file compression during transfer.

Compression is controlled by a server side configuration file setting and is enabled by default for server to server file replication which permits faster, more efficient data transfer.  This feature can however, also be leveraged for file transfer between server to client, that is, compress the files as you get them from (check out) or send them to (check in) Vault.

Now, before you run off and start compressing your downloads, you should be aware that this is really only designed for users with a poor server connection, WAN or perhaps remote access.  Having your file compressed, transferred and then uncompressed does not really speed anything up if you are sitting right next to the server with a gigabit connection.

If you do however fall into the category of having a poor server connection and you want to learn more, head off to our WikiHelp article here and test for yourself.

- Allan

Photo: Elsie esq.

What is replicating when? (Some clarification on sharing data)

Replication, its good stuff and we have talked about it on this blog many times but there is still a little confusion out there about the meaning of the terminology and how it behaves.

Replication comes in two flavors, File Store replication and Database replication (used in Connected Workgroups).  

File Store replication relates to the transfer of the actual files from site to site either on demand or on a schedule.  

This file transfer schedule is configured by the Vault administrator in the ADMS Console and most companies will set this to run once a day prior to backup on the main site outside of working hours.  You could of course set this up to run every hour or more in rapidly changing and highly collaborative design environments but typically having the latest files on site at the start of each day is sufficient and users can always transfer a file "on demand" if they need it immediately (You don't have the file locally - do you want to copy it now?).

Database replication is where the SQL servers transfer meta-data back and forth between SQL servers - this is a process managed by SQL (not by Autodesk Data Management Server), you do not set up schedules and although you can tweak SQL replication settings its typically not a great idea to do this unless guided by Autodesk.

Given a healthy connection SQL replication should occur every 2 minutes, the important point here is that users should be seeing file status information as close to real time as possible to accommodate remote collaborative design.

In addition to this, File Store replication can be configured to only replicate specific Vault files to reduce network traffic, although you need all files at the publisher site for backup you can ignore files not required for use at certain subscriber Workgroups. Database replication however replicates all meta-data all the time.  Vault security should be used to prevent users from accessing restricted files or data in this case.

These 2 types of replication need separate monitoring and are logged via separate methods (See general log information here and SQL monitoring here).

In terms of their use - Filestore replication can be configured to work alone, this is the case when two or more sites are well connected and share a single SQL database, improving user productivity by making their files available locally.  Connected Workgroups (or fully replicated environments) use both file store and database replication - typically due to poor connection between the sites meaning a single SQL database is hard to support.

Read more on the WikiHelp links above to better understand and hopefully simplify the support and maintenance of your replicated environment.

Maintain Me! (Maintenance Plans for SQL)

My hope is if you are reading this then you are a Vault user, my other hope is that you are already taking good care of your Vault Server, you know, performing your backups (perhaps even testing to make sure they work from time to time!), watching the database and file store growth, periodically checking your Vault and Windows logs for issues and otherwise keeping the engine well oiled.

But what about Microsoft SQL?  A great deal of your Vault's performance can be directly attributed to SQL performance and just like any other system it too needs to be maintained to ensure efficient operation.  

The world of a DBA can though be a little intimidating and confusing to Vault administrators, trying to decipher the optimal database settings and what maintenance tasks are actually required - indeed without a little SQL knowledge how would you know where to find the maintenance plan setup?

To this end we have had for some time information around SQL maintenance best practice and a step by step procedure in fact (for both full and Express editions) on how your Vault databases should be configured, what initial size and growth factors should be (too big is inefficient as is too small - it needs to be just right) and were this can all be found.

Working with Microsoft over time, some of these recommendations have changed (We no longer remove the unused space as part of the regular maintenance) so it may also be worth while going back and looking at these maintenance plan guidelines again and giving your environment a bit of a tweak.

So where is all this information?  It's available here at the bottom of the Perform Vault Maintenance page in WikiHelp of course.  Now stop reading blogs and get back to reading log files and tweaking server settings.

-Allan

Photo: LadyDragonflyCC <3

Finished searching, what now? (Reporting)

So we have figured out how to search correctly, how to refine the search criteria and we are ready to start searching.  What do we do with the search results?  Well if you are a CAD user you will probably get the file to check out and modify, add to assembly or something equally as fun.  If you are more interested though in understanding some stats on the file, project completion details or change order close rate you will want to be running a report.

Reports in Vault Explorer client can be generated against a project folder or on search results but the principles are much the same.  Out of the box Autodesk provide a number of templates for you to run in different situations against different document types - these templates vary visually and structurally depending on the application (project folder report vs search results vs in-CAD data mapping) but the most important variation is the properties exposed in each of the templates (exported from Vault).

There is a complete list of the default templates in the WikiHelp Reports and Template Administration page here which you are able to modify to your liking but you can also build your own report templates from scratch.  There is a requirement here to have some understanding of XML and RDLC authoring applications, but using the existing templates as an example and leveraging the report authoring tool supplied with Vault to configure the report properties you can use a tool like Microsoft Visual Studio to manipulate the visual appearance of the template and quickly get up and running with a number of custom reports.

-Allan

Fine Tuning your Search Slop Factor (You can't make this stuff up)

This week we are truly going under the hood with a look at how to fine tune your Lucene search engine by tweaking the slop factor.  As we discussed last week there are a number of factors affecting what results are returned in your search based on tokens and operators, details of which can be found here.

If you are finding however due to the structure of file names or other factors that your search results are simply too inaccurate or perhaps not broad enough there is a small modification you can make to alter the overall Vault search behavior.  This Value "Search Slop Factor" available as part of the Lucene service and modifyable in the web.config file defines to what degree of accuracy your search string must meet to be considered a match or, how close to the intended result does the search term need to be?

The Slop Factor is what we refer to as an edit distance and by default its set to 10 to enable a number of valid results to a search - if however you want a search on A-22* to ONLY return files with the string A-22 then you should set your slop factor to zero - be careful though because at 0 a search for A22* will not locate any files.

If you this same search search to return 22-A your slop actor would need to be 3, this is the number of token moves to get the string back in the correct order of the search query A-22*.  Note that if you want to return any values "out of order" the minimum slop factor required is 2.

If you would like to the same search to find a file called A-101-3675B-22 your slop factor would need to be 5 - it takes 5 token positional changes to move the "22" and match your search string A-22*.

Simple right?  Well this may get messy when we start searching for text strings in descriptions and comments - make your slop factor too small - say 2 and you may find your search for "front suspension" does not find "suspension assembly for front end "

So as you can see the factor decides the distance a string can be spread and still considered a match - your search of course will only return results for what you specify in terms of the search string but the "accuracy" or search intent is altered.  For more detail and examples visit the WikiHelp article on Fine-Tune Searches with the Search Slop Factor.

-Allan

Photo: Joelk75

Name the 6 Searchable Punctuation Characters (Searching Fundamentals)

By far one of the most important (but often times misunderstood) areas of Vault functionality is searching.

The concept itself is simple enough: type in a value and a number of matches are returned, depending on the type of search we run (advanced search on specific property or set of properties, a basic search across all indexed properties or file content) the quantity and quality of results will vary.

When you dig a little deeper into what is being returned though this is not always so simple, there are a number of factors related to tokenized searching, discussed in detail in the WikiHelp Article Searching a Vault, which should be understood in order to fully utilize the lucene search engine within Vault for better search results or at least an understanding of why some files are found through your search and some not.

By getting acquainted with the use of wild cards relative to tokenized strings, special characters, spaces and operators you will find your searches to be more accurate and predictable.

In addition to the basics on search there are further configuration changes which can be made to the search engine which will fine tune or modify the behavior of your Vault searches - stay tuned in the upcoming weeks for further details on managing the effective range of your search criteria.

-Allan

Photo: pleuntje

Hmmm, what if I hold down Alt and U then press A, then TW? (Vault Hotkeys)

Well it actually takes you to your workspace from inside of CAD.  There are a whole host more combinations like this for both your CAD integrations and Vault Explorer to make getting around the interface just that little bit quicker for fans of typing (I'm looking at you AutoCAD users).

Lots of Vault shortcuts follow the standards of Copy (CTRL+C), Paste (CTRL+P) or Open (CTRL+O) but there are plenty of Vault specific time savers such as check in, check out, update properties and manage ownership as well as several you may be hard pressed to anticipate or guess (like the simple combination listed above), so our WikiHelp lays these all out for you on the Keyboard Shortcuts for Vault Commands page here.

Print out a cheat sheet or pick out the most valuable and start to enjoy mouse free interaction with your Vault Add-ins and Explorer.

-Allan

Photo: Hades2k

 

What is your SQL up to tonight? (Monitoring SQL Replication)

One of the more important aspects of a large multi-site implementations is your database replication and obviously the health of this replication.  We often talk about Vault replication as being set and forget and for the most part it is just that, running trouble free in the background....... until one day it’s not, and unfortunately if and when that one day comes all too many system admins are caught off guard.

In a typical business environment replication can fail for any number of reasons including of course site connectivity, network load, disk space, user security etc, so it’s important to stay on top of any changes that may affect this.

The WikiHelp article on Monitoring SQL Replication takes you through some of the Microsoft SQL monitoring tools and processes, providing background on some of the key performance indicators you should be monitoring to warn when replication is taking too long, the performance is slowed or site subscriptions are nearing expiration.

The article has a number of useful links to "how to" articles from Microsoft explaining how an administrator can use their tools to set up the monitoring features and thresholds discussed.  A handy swag of information for any system administrator.

-Allan

Photo: mjtmail (tiggy)