Stability of 1605

[skiwi]

I've (finally) got 1605 (64bit) on Windows with PCS access to SQL Server.


I'm finding it is not very stable - closing (i.e. crashing) with no message on average daily!


Do you have a similar experience.
I'm reluctant to roll it out as is?

[BobM]

yes 1605 had this issue,

try 1622 instead

[Sunshine]

Didn't have any crashing with 1605 and sql server in our environment.
Update, it's 32 bit

[BobM]

Didn't have any crashing with 1605 and sql server in our environment

It was quite frequent (Sparx suddenly stopping)
It is very hard to reproduce but, in our opinion, it had something to do with copied elements which included glossary terms
I can't remember exactly but I think I tested both procloud and direct access to the SQL database

I'm curious what skiwi his experience is when it happened

[Richard Freggi]

16.1 (build 1622) crashed repeatedly on my machine while running queries on the *.qea local repository on the SQL scratchpad.  I was writing a new query, so probably I had an issue in my SQL, but still: no error message, application just closes (disappears).  Happened maybe 8 or 9 times in 1 day.  I finished my query and now it runs fine.

Definitely not as stable as my old EA 13.

[Geert Bellekens]

I agree, I've seen more crashes in v16 than in v15.2.

I can't really put my finger on it, as it happens at seemingly random moments, but definitely less stable than 15.2

Geert

[skiwi]

Well its now crashing on me frequently.
It's difficult to report when there is no crash message, no error dump, or no option to turn on "phone home".


It's also difficult to identify a cause.
All of the crashes are when I am working in diagrams.
Recently I had selected several items and was moving them together, crash.
The last crash I pasted from a Word Doc to a notes field in the side column and away she went.
Crash. Just closed an entity whose note I had updated, then boom.
Crash. In diagram just clicking between entities to view their notes in the side pane.

[Eve]

Difficult to say much when you don't have a reproduceable cause and I haven't seen it in my usage of EA.

My (reluctant) recommendation is to enable "User-Mode Dumps" (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/wer/collecting-user-mode-dumps)

I'd recommend setting it to a mini dump and collecting a few to give us the best (but not guaranteed) chance and being able to identify the cause(s).

PS. EA has never had custom error reporting. So the option to send a crash report would be going to Microsoft, not us. I don't know what they do with them, but it's not going to help.

[Sunshine]

Nothing in the windows event log?

[BobM]

The last crash I pasted from a Word Doc to a notes field in the side column and away she went.
Crash. Just closed an entity whose note I had updated, then boom.
Crash.

We had the exact same behavior
The problem is if you try again it won't crash the next times, try 20 times and it crashes the twentieth time

Nothing in the windows event log?

Yes, supplied all of them to Sparx (it's always the same message for every user) but it hasn't made it clearer for them to find out the root cause

[Geert Bellekens]

I found a reasonably reproducable crash with EA v16.1.1622 in the 64 bit edition.
This doesn't seem to happen in the 32 bit edition.

When I generate a few schema composer schema's with my Message Composer, EA crashes hard.
It never happens on the first generation, but often on the second or third one.
The error in the event viewer:

Faulting application name: EA.exe, version: 16.1.0.1622, time stamp: 0x637c546c
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.18362.1533, time stamp: 0xd6055cfe
Exception code: 0xc0000409
Fault offset: 0x000000000008d17f
Faulting process id: 0x129e0
Faulting application start time: 0x01d90652acfa90c0
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Sparx Systems\EA\EA.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
Report Id: ca51ff8c-635a-4cd7-9cab-ee85a7f5a959
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

I've sent this info, plus the mini-dump to support.

Geert

[skiwi]

I'm working on getting mini-dump turned on, but it requires admin priv to change the registry, and therefore level 2 support, and opsec support,  ....
lol, and I can't run the event viewer - again its restricted in my corporate env

Imagine if EA had an option within it that could be turned on to capture crash dumps!

[Eve]

Imagine if EA had an option within it that could be turned on to capture crash dumps!

I'm imagining. The result would be that as soon as organizations of all kinds that restrict this kind of thing immediately revoke their authorization to use Enterprise Architect.

It's reasons like this that I only reluctantly recommended it.

[skiwi]

lol 
imagine that.
Anyway, did get minidumps enabled,
and coincidentally EA obliged very soon after, so a dump is on its way to support. Thanks.

[skiwi]

Progress report - 14 crash dumps submitted and counting ...


looking forward to hearing from Sparx EA support