EA Mapping Performance Issue over VPN

[pvickers]

I am working on a team where several people are making updates concurrently while developing a large data model.
We have EA configured to use a SQL Server database repository.
When the team members are all located inside the corporate network EA has been performing very well.

We are using Sparx EA with the EA Mapper add-in to manage data mappings.

Due to the current Covid-19 pandemic, team members are connecting remotely over slower networks and finding the mapping task is failing.

For example when trying to create a new mapping, expanding the source class in the mapping window is causing EA to "hang" which eventually results in a program memory exception.

We have been able to work around this problem by exporting the branch of the data model we need, then importing it into a local (exclusive) repository.
After a team member has completed their changes and created new mappings they export from their local repository and import back into the central one.

My questions are:
1. Is this a reasonable approach?
2. Has anyone else noticed EA's performance becoming slower using remote connections?
3. Has anyone else experienced using EA (with or without the EA Mapper add-in) very slowly consuming memory until getting the error "System.OutOfMemoryException"?

For background we are currently using:
Sparx EA version 15.0.1513
EA Mapper version 2.1.13.18416.

Thanks!

[qwerty]

I guess that Geert would recommend to use Citrix.

q.

[Eve]

2. Has anyone else noticed EA's performance becoming slower using remote connections?

I'm personally using Enterprise Architect at home from a very poor internet connection. It's unreliable enough that I have a satellite connection as a backup.

With PCS it can sometimes be a little painful, but overall it's quite workable. Without PCS it's practically impossible. Even so, I would try to avoid XMI and reporting.

3. Has anyone else experienced using EA (with or without the EA Mapper add-in) very slowly consuming memory until getting the error "System.OutOfMemoryException"?!

If you're seeing that message it will be from a .Net add-in. Not EA. Sorry I can't help more.

[Uffe]

Hello,

EA is in fact notoriously chatty over the network. It does large numbers of tiny database operations whenever you open diagrams, look at element properties, etc etc.
Sparx supplies the WAN Optimizer to address this, although I have no personal experience with that.

The memory leak sounds more like the Add-In than the EA client itself. But that's just a guess.

/Uffe

[Geert Bellekens]

The memory leak sounds more like the Add-In than the EA client itself. But that's just a guess.

/Uffe

May certainly be the case, but why would it only happen in a VPN setup?

If the there was a memory leak in the add-in code, wouldn't that happen in a LAN or local setup as well?
It's not like the code does anything different depending on the setup or connectivity (I know, because I wrote the code )

I can imagine EA handling things differently though.

Geert

[pvickers]

2. Has anyone else noticed EA's performance becoming slower using remote connections?

Even so, I would try to avoid XMI and reporting.

Thanks Eve.
Could you elaborate on your comment on avoiding XMI?
I already have concerns with using XMI just because of the logistics of a growing team of people importing/exporting their portions of our larger model.

[Eve]

XMI is an operation that does a lot of database requests (even by the standards of EA).

With any connection that has higher latency (especially without the cloud) you'll find that really adds up.

[pvickers]

Thanks to all for your replies and advice.

Since the WAN Optimizer appears to be an older approach, I will spend some time checking out the Pro Cloud Server and Citrix options.

Based on what little I know about it at this point, PCS appears easy to get installed/configured and it won't cost us anything to get started.
But I don't know what I don't know.  There could indeed be dragons ahead!
 

Thanks,
Perry

[pvickers]

I thought I would post an update on where we are with this.

We decided not to go the Citrix route at this time.

I have created an isolated test environment and have installed Pro Cloud Server (PCS).
Just following the documentation and a Sparx webinar it was quite easy to get this configured.

At this point I have only used the XAMPP server configuration and converted a single user to running EA through it to a PostgreSQL back-end database.

For the next step we want to set this up for a larger team to test. We want to set up the integration to our SharePoint environment.
Rather than simply publishing the many html files to a SharePoint location, I wish to learn more about the PCS SharePoint integration.

Does anyone have any suggestions or experiences to share regarding how the PCS-Sharepoint integration works?

Thanks!
Perry