Analyzer....so....slow.....

[Centauri27]

Hello everyone.

I'm a veteran Flare user who managed to convince TPTB to pony up for an Analyzer license. I am running it on our main project right now and the first thing that struck me is, "Man, this thing is slow!". For example, when opening my Flare project, the Analyzer Summary warns that it may take several minutes to display--and it's not joking. I made a couple of very minor edits in Analyzer (deleting a few unused styles) and it took several more minutes for the program to refresh. A couple of times, Windows even displayed the "(Not Responding)" in the Analyzer title bar as even the OS was duped into thinking the app had hung.

Granted, there are several mitigating factors that might exacerbate the Analyzer slowness: the project is fairly large (300+ topics), many topics were identified in some of the summaries (for example, "13961 index keyword suggestions", "3977 new style suggestions"), and the project is a fairly old one, having come over from RoboHelp many years ago (don't know if this would have an impact).

I'd like to hear about first impressions from other new Analyzer users--is my experience par for the course for an initial Analyzer run? Will things speed up when I address some of the Analyzer issues? Are there any tips or tricks to turn off various options to speed up operation? My hardware specs are fairly pedestrian: Windows XP SP3, Core 2 Duo with 2 GB RAM.

Many thanks.
Carl

[NorthEast]

I'd be interested in the consensus too.

I have quite a high spec PC but also a large project (2500 topics). I find Analyzer's scanning and updating of results extremely slow; even after the scan appears to be complete and reaches 100%, updating results can take several minutes.

One thing I have learned to do is not to regularly save individual topics, as each save triggers the scan/update process; now I save batches of changes in one go.

I also find Analyzer quite regularly stops responding, it'll freeze about 1 in 3 times that I use it. It hasn't caused any serious data loss yet, but it doesn't inspire much confidence.

The features available in Analyzer are good, but the frustration of using it in this particular project means I don't get as much use out of it as I'd like to.

[Adrian Durand]

I hae to echo Dave's comments, my project has 768 topics, and after it has fnished scanning the statistics pape is populated quickly but the summary still takes a couple of minutes to appear.

I'm running on a fairly high spec pc, (3GB Ram, dual cpu etc) and this project was created from scratch in Flare.
Also, the project being scanned is local on my pc, not even over a network,

I look forward to any other comments.

Adrian

[Centauri27]

After browsing the user manual, I decided I'd try searching my project for similar segments to weed out inconsistent wording. I start the "Similar Segments" search and got the standard "Loading...this may take several minutes to complete". I look at the status bar at the message "Checking segment xxx of 10661"---wow, ten thousand segments! I stare at the counter for a few moments and estimate that it takes 2 to 3 seconds per segment. Hmmmm....I pull out my calculator....ten thousand segments even at 2 seconds per segment....that means the operation will complete in...5.5 HOURS!!!!

Gulp. Good thing this is still near the start of my work day....

I think MadCap has its work cut out for them for the next version of Analyzer.

Carl

[Centauri27]

Oh and to add insult to injury, Analyzer grabs a whopping 1.2GB (!) of RAM during the segment scan, slowing my computer to an absolute crawl. Yikes. Time to cancel this experiment. It made it to segment 300.

[helseykc]

Gosh. This thread started four years ago... Are there any solutions?!?!!? Analyzer is totally unusable...

[NorthEast]

MadCap do release new versions of Analyzer, usually in conjunction with Flare releases, but I couldn't tell you if they've done anything to address the performance issues - I haven't used Analyzer v5 yet. I've pretty much given up on it, as it was unusable with the projects I work with (even on a high spec PC).

I'd perhaps contact MadCap support and see what they say, just to see if the performance you're experiencing is normal.

If the lack of posts on this forum is anything to go by, either not many people use Analyzer, or those that do don't have problems with it.

[Nita Beck]

If the lack of posts on this forum is anything to go by, either not many people use Analyzer, or those that do don't have problems with it.

Sorry that I can't speak to the subject of the post.

In response to Dave's wondering, I do use Analyzer, fairly regulary, and usually don't have any problems with it. It sometimes does take a long time to first load up a large project, but once the project is loaded, it behaves and I can get done what I need to do.

[Centauri27]

I pretty much stopped using Analyzer since my last post above over two years ago. We continue to upgrade to the latest versions, but I haven't fired it up in a long long time. Part of the reason is that, even if Analyzer didn't have the horrendous performance issues, applying it to a (large) legacy project is futile: it identifies so many fragment suggestions and whatnot that it would be totally unfeasible to try to address them all--or to try to separate the wheat from the chafe. Analyzer is probably most helpful when you're using it to advise you as you start up a new project from scratch.

Another reason I'm afraid (make that reluctant) to use Analyzer is that if MadCap did to Analyzer what they did to Flare....I don't hold out much hope for performance improvements (just search the forum for "slow Flare").

Just my two cents worth.

Carl