Release of V9.0.3 - When??

[nileshpa]

Has anyone got any ideas (or is there anyone from Actinic who can tell us) when 9.0.3 will be available? Also, what known issues are expected to be fixed.

I have been using V9.0 2 since its release and am still suffering from the following issues.

1. Intermittent crashes - whether its moving sections or simply making changes.
2. Slowness - takes 45 mins to preview the site and takes over an hour to upload it.
3. Backups takes over an hour. So, I'm resorting to simply copying the entire SITE1 folder onto another drive.

I have raised the above with Actinic Support and have been told that 9.0.3 adresses some (not all) issues in this area, implying I just have to wait and see once its released.

Not entirely happy with the situation. So, anyone in the know about 9.0.3, I would really appreciate any update on the situation.

Many thanks
Nilesh

[Darren B]

well i guess it depends on the problems found when they fix the bugs, unfortunately fixing one problem sometimes creates others.

IMHO i recon its probably a few weeks away, but this is only a guess, it could well be around the corner.

Not every bug will be fixed in this release either and im sure actinic have a good idea of what will be in the release, but they will not tell you incase it does not make it or it causes other issues that they cant fix in time, so results in the fix being withdrawn for a later release.

I notice your problems all appear to me to be performance issues, is your system OK, mind you how big is your site?

[jont]

IMHO i recon its probably a few weeks away, but this is only a guess, it could well be around the corner.

There was meant to be another testing day with site owners / developers on Monday to test v9.0.3 but has been cancelled ... so they are still obviously testing and re-testing ... whilst a pain to wait probably better than releasing something half-baked.

[dave_finlayson]

3. Backups takes over an hour. So, I'm resorting to simply copying the entire SITE1 folder onto another drive.

I smell the evil wafts of EntireSectionList!

[Darren B]

There was meant to be another testing day with site owners / developers on Monday to test v9.0.3 but has been cancelled

were you going to this one - cancelled hmmm i remember something about CD having a holiday

[jont]

I was going - was on honeymoon for the last one - gutted as was combining a trip to Legoland and taken a weeks unpaid holiday as well Least I will be able to catch up on the site designs

[nileshpa]

Thanks for the swift replies.
I'm not asking for a full list of what is cleared/fixed in 9.0.3 but just want to know if it will resolve the issues I'm facing. Agree with Darren that the problems I'm facing are perfomance related.

A quick update on my site setup. Hardware I'm running the Actinic software on is a Fujitsu laptop, model id Lifebook P7010 with Windows XP. This maybe few years old but is fairly high spec. I use to happily run Oracle 9i & 10g DB servers together with its application Server with no problems whatsoever. The laptop is fairly tidied & optimised, So I know its not the hardware. Everything else I throw at it seems to run fine on it.

My actinic Database is currently 63Mb and consist of about 9000 products. Although, I have gone for one section per product, the section actually contains one master product with about 6 to 8 hidden products that relate to difference sizes of the particular style. BTW- These are footwear I'm talking about here. The Actinic DB is also regularly purged & compacted. All in all - Its just a simple setup. Please note that I did not have any performace issues whilst running Actinic 8.5 or 9.0.1.

Have noticed that during site preview or publish to web, it spents at least 80% of its time in the "checking HTML pages" process. Copies of the SITE1 folder was provided to Actinic support who advised that I wait for 9.0.3 & see what happens. Hope the above helps

BTW - I do not recall having knowingly put EntireSectionList in any part of the code. However, I will check it out.


Regards
Nilesh

[dave_finlayson]

9000 products all in sections of their own is a big site, it may be that there is not much you can do about the speed at the moment (EntireSectionList would probably have rendered Actinic unuseable on the desktop with that many products) however if 9.0.3 delivers on it's promises, you may notice a increase in speed once it is out.

[jont]

The issues you mention are supposedly resolved in v9.0.3 (speed being the main focus of the patch) ... if they solve on your actual installation is another matter.

[Darren B]

A few speed changes are definately on the books, but that is a hefty old site so i am not supprised it is slow.

As for a high spec laptop, maybe but if its still running the original installation along with all the other stuff that has been installed and de-installed then it will clutter the system as well. I am not saying this will fix your problem but a fresh install every so often is worth while. IMHO

[nileshpa]

I've just exported the contents of the catalog as CSV onto excel and counted # of Sections, products etc. There are in all, 9509 products and 1910 sections. Then again, most of these sections & products are hidden.
At present, all my products are defined in Sage Line50, exported using ActinicLink & then grouped together within their own sections. The relevant section for the product gets un-hidden when I want the product visible on the web.

I was told the number of products Actinic could handle without compromise was 20K. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm now reconsidering the strategy. I might just export only the products I want to sell on Actinic. I know it'll be a pain as I will have to redefine the product definitions, set all custom variable, permutaions etc. before they go online. But long term, its be worth it, I guess.
OK - back to the drawing board.

Regards,Nilesh

[Darren B]

apparently it is 20k, used to be 10k i think but thats alot of sections to go with the products, if you dont need them delete them, im guess you can pull them back in when and if you need to.

Seems pointless having it bloated if you dont need it to be.

[cbarling]

Nilesh, v9.0.3 fixes a number of the most common bugs in v9 including some crashes. There are also some major performance improvements so you will be unlucky if you don't see some better performance with your site. In the meantime, if you look at http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=36649 there are somne tips which might improve things.

As to the timing, the answer is as soon as possible. However, we are doing a lot of testing to try to make sure that we don't introduce new problems. The best that I can say is weeks rather than months. The only thing holding the release up is bugs that we have found that are new in v9.0.3 and that we are fixing.

Hope that helps a bit.

Chris, Actinic

[fleetwood]

Thanks for the update Chris.

I think I can speak for a lot of us when I say that a few words direct from Actinic Towers, keeping us up-to-date of progress, means a lot, and is far better than us speculating amongst ourselves.

If you can take a moment or two to provide weekly updates, even if just to say "we are not quite there yet, but hope for a release within xyz timeframe" that would be appreciated.

It would be nice if the 'special offer' on AP could be extended to allow a reasonable timeframe after the release of 9.03, as one seems closely tied to the other.

[nileshpa]

Chris,

Many thanks for the update & also the thread on improving performance. To wait a few Weeks for 9.0.3, I think I can live with.

I followed CD's advise on switching off the "Check for Nested HTML comments & FormTags". The site preview took 25 mins instead of 45 mins. Thats a good start this morning.

As for the number of products & sections I have, I've now gone back to the drawing board and started to delete products from both, Sage & Actinic. Just to streamline the whole thing.

With regards to Martin's statement. I definately second what he says about regular updates.

Regards
Nilesh