Nprinting 18.0.4. Long Running nprinting jobs with inconsistent run times

[nsm1234567]

Hi there,

We are currently experiencing issues with long-running reports, inconsistent run times and reports that sometimes run "forever" in Nprinting and I'm hoping someone might be able to advise on what we can do to resolve this.

We currently have three reports that run in the mornings.  Our Nprinting server is a Windows Server 2012 server that is running reports on our Qlikview server cluster (we have two nodes in our cluster).  We're currently pointing the reports at a specific node.

We're finding that our reports are extremely inconsistent, but that the run-times seem to be increasing over time.  When they first started running,the two smaller reports took 15 minutes, and the larger one took 30 minutes.  Now the reports are sometimes taking over 2 hours to complete.  The run time for one of the smaller reports over the past few days:  1hr 11 minutes, 2hr 20 minutes, 2hr 10 minutes, 1hr 4 minutes, 35 minutes.  We find at times also that if a report is never finishing and we change the setup of the report to use the other node in our cluster, the initial run on the other node is significantly faster but it then also slows down over time.

Today the report is still running after an hour and ten minutes.  If I look at the engine log, it appears to be full of the following warnings:

"Navigator error while processing request"

"Exception while processing request"

I have no idea how to troubleshoot this issue.  We've been in contact with Qlik, but haven't had any answers.  It's not feasible for us to have reports in production that are so inconsistent.

Does anyone have any ideas of things we can try in order to remedy this issue?  The two nodes in our cluster are very large and powerful machines and shouldn't be having so many issues generating these reports.

[Lech_Miszkiewicz]

What type of connection are you using?

LOCAL, QVP or QLIKSENSE?

How big is Qlik application (disk space + number of records)

What kind of reports are you generating - there is big overhead if the template is not done right or Qlik App is not optimized for NPrinitng report

There is many variables so you might need to get someone who knows  NPrinting well to troubleshoot it for you  in house or via webex.

regards

Lech

[nsm1234567]

Hi there,

As mentioned, the report is being run against QVP (i.e. one of the nodes in our cluster environment).

The Qlik app is 600mb.  The largest table has 3.8 million rows.  In our environment this is a small app.

The Nprinting reports were actually created by a Qlik consultant and we haven't gotten good answers yet as to the issues we're having.

If the reports just ran an hour every day for instance that's something we could work with.  The main concern is the inconsistency in performance ranging from 30 minutes to 3 hours and some days the reports run "forever" i.e. in excess of an 8 hour work day.

[Lech_Miszkiewicz]

‌since Qlik has built it i would push really hard to get them fix it or provide you with an answer!! And i am hoping you can share the answer here as i have experienced similar issue and was never able to reslove it.

All what i noticed was the Bookmark file in Nprinting service account AppData user folder growing in size:... (bookmarks are used to apply filters etc...)

i am looking forward to see answers to this topic as it is very important!!

cheers

Lech

[dillerja · Accepted solution]

We had a similar issue on a specific report.  Qlik Support suggested we look at the issue described in the following support article including the work around and it proved to address our issue:

https://qliksupport.force.com/articles/000042985

There was supposedly a software fix for this in the April 2018 release, however I have not yet deployed that but plan to soon.

[nsm1234567]

This seems very close to the issues we're having.  Had a look at that folder and we had several bookmarks in excess of 30 mb's.  I've deleted and refreshed the metadata and that refresh went much faster than usual.  Will give further feedback if our job runs are faster on Monday.

[Lech_Miszkiewicz]

I did not know it was considered as a BUG. Now i will double check this and keep my eyes closely on it.

cheers

Lech

[nsm1234567]

Thanks so much for this response.  It appears that this was indeed our issue and I'm now planning an upgrade.  The reports which took 2+ hours on Friday finished in < 18 minutes yesterday and this morning, which is obviously a huge improvement.

[cuffy_1981]

Just to say a thank you for posting this.

After our nPrinting 18 install we were suffering from slow delivery of reports (1 hour plus) for very small reports

After removing this bookmarks file we are now delivering all our reports under 5 minutes.

[sandeepgather]

We are having the same issue where Nprinting reports are taking inconsistent time. We have April 2020 version. Tried looking at the case mentioned above but April 2020 version does not seem to have that folder. Any suggestions