iTest crashes when table RM has more than 3 keys

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tleding asked Apr 19, '09 tleding posted Apr 19, '09

iTest crashes when table RM has more than 3 keys

Folks,

I have a table style RM where I need to key off of at least 4 different fields. the number of rows that will be parsed is in excess of 1000and when I have all of the keys enabled, iTest will hang and then crash. The symptoms are that the memory in use climbs to over 250MB and it will not allow me to perform any garbage collection nor any operarion whatsoever. Sometimes it will just hang and then I need to forceably close the application. If I reduce the number of keyed fields to 3 or less, then this does not happen.

Does anyone know of limitations regarding table RMs, # of key fields, number of parsed rows, etc?

iTest response map

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Answer 1 · 2009-04-19T19:59:13Z

PaulD answered Apr 19, '09 PaulD posted Apr 19, '09

There are no specific limits on columns, rows, or keys. But the amount of memory required grows as the product of these. So it sounds like you may be trying to too much here.

When you say that you need to "key off at least 4 different fields", do you mean that these are all independent keys? More likely, I assume, you mean that you need to provide the value for four different columns to uniquely identify the row you need? If so, then I think the solution is that you need to define a custom query. Don't bother marking all of those columns as key columns. Instead, you'll create a custom query that takes four arguments -- corresponding to the four "key" columns. In fact, you'll probably want custom queries with those same arguments, that extract each of the other columns given those four key columns.

When you do this, you'll probably find that memory is no longer a problem.

If you need some help doing this, post a sample of the response and we can help create the custom query examples for you.

Note that with custom multi-argument queries, you'll probably not find that the "blue boxes" are all that helpful for "point-and-click" analysis. You'll just need to manually add analysis rules using the "query" extractor, and entering the appropriate query by hand.

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KumarS commented · Apr 21, 2009 at 04:37 AM

In iTest, we follow the policy of not restricting to the users to a certain memory limit. If the user is willing to spend more memory and CPU, he can use bigger response maps, workspaces, etc... The key is to know when you are reaching this limit and increasing the memory requirements of iTest (by changing iTest.ini) and your machine.

In this case, for each key column, iTest automatically generates a number of queries and evaluates them for you. This is what ends up giving you the "blue" box feedback in Response View, a list of evaluated queries in the Queries view. You can control how many queries iTest evaluates per response map using iTest preference under response mapping. So if you increase the number of key columns, iTest ends up evaluating larger number of queries and consequently, in this case, is running into "256 MB" memory limit imposed on it.

As PaulD suggested, you can just create custom queries instead of marking more columns as keys.

You can also remove unnecessary queries by going to "Queries" page in the response map editor and deleting other unnecessary queries and only keeping the ones you want. You can just select the auto-generated query and click customize. Do this with the queries you want then click the checkbox: "Do not use queries that were generated by the response map".

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