Ntaskldr.exe and the creation/update of local view indexes after replication

Hi,

I have problems with the size and performance of large local database replicas. I’ve read a lot of discussions in this and other forums, but I didn’t find a solution for my special questions yet - so I hope that someone can help …

MY QUESTIONS ARE:

→ Is it somehow possible to change the behavior of the ntaskldr.exe on a Notes 6.5.x client? Maybe a notes.ini setting or a policy setting? It would be a first solution if I could suppress the creation of the local view indexes after the first replication!!!

→ Is it possible to discard local view indexes without having a Dominio Administrator client installed? Maybe using Lotus Script?

→ Are there any other discussions or documentations on this issue available?

MORE DETAILS ON MY ISSUE:

→ Lotus Notes Clients 6.5.3/6.5.5.

→ Lotus Domino Server 6.x/7.x.

→ Several databases with about 50.000 to 100.000 documents (each database) are replicated to the Notes clients for offline work.

→ The databases have a lot of views. All view properties are set to “Refresh Auto after first use” and “Discard if inactive for 45 days”.

→ About 75% of the view indexes are built on the server, which is no problem on the server.

What I found out so far:

1.) When I create new local replicas of the databases (for example for a new user), the ntaskldr starts after replication and creates view indexes for all views, that have a view index built on the server. This takes about 1-2 hours with a CPU usage of up to 100%. Before ntaskldr starts, the databases are very small (about 200 MB), after ntaskldr finished the databases are very large (some GB, and about 90% of the entire space is used by the view indexes). Using Domino Administrator I found out, that all of the views indexes that are built on the server are also created in the local replica. The local databases were NOT opened/used during this time …

2.) In this databases there are about 1000 new or changed documents a day, and the local replicas of the databases are replicated once daily. After the replication finished, the ntaskldr.exe runs again for about 20-30 minutes (again with up to 100% CPU usage) and updates all local views that are built. So in combination with issue (1), also all the big view indexes, that are not needed for offline work, are updated in the local replica.

I have set the notes.ini variable Log_Update=2 to verify this behavior, and there are hundreds of entries like >>Updating database.nsf view ‘viewname’<< in the local log (after the first creation of the replica as well as after the following replications).

The problems on this behavior are:

→ During ntaskldr runs, it’s nearly not possible to work with the client.

→ A lot of local views are created, even if they are not needed for offline work.

→ The database becomes very large, up to 10 GB with up to 95% for the view indexes …

→ Using a Domino Administrator client, I have the possibiltiy to compact the database with the option “Discard any built view indexes”, or I can use the “Manage Views” to purge view indexes. But WITHOUT a Domino Administrator client, I don’t know any feature to discard all the view indexes, that are not necessary for offline work.

THANKS FOR YOUR HELP!!!

Michael

Subject: Update on this performance problems: Reader fields with many entries caused this performance problems …

Thanks for all the answers so far.

For everyone who might be interested in this problem / questions: We found out the reason for the extreme performance problems and the big size of the view indexes - not only in local replicas: The reason is the intensive use of reader fields, so for example documents with 15 or more entries in reader fields. This causes to increase the view index size (factor 3 to 6), and as a result this causes the performance problems in local replicas.

This seems to be a general problem of Notes/Domino - independent from the database design.

For more details on this behavior see the following post on LDD ND6Forum and its responses:

http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/nd6forum.nsf/55c38d716d632d9b8525689b005ba1c0/e2710a5af27e3c5a8525722400701a4b?OpenDocument

Although we already found some workarounds for the problems, we would still be grateful to get more feedback on this issue. Thanks!

Michael

Subject: Ntaskldr.exe and the creation/update of local view indexes after replication …

I have the exact same problem. I have a series of large local databases on my notes workspace/data directory, and ntaskldr swallows up my machine whole. I have no full text indexes, and are not running local agents. Does anyone know of a way to specifically turn of indexing of local databases? Other than going to the windows task manager and killing the ntaskldr process? Once I do that I cant replicate in the backround.