SUMMARY:
This article describes an issue regarding report execution after upgrading from Strategy 9.x to Strategy 10.6. Reports with nested derived metrics including case statements will take an extended amount of time to run and utilize more RAM in comparison to the behavior seen in Strategy 9.x.
SYMPTOM:
Reports with nested derived metrics including case statements are causing the Analytical Engine in Strategy 10.x to take more time to execute and utilize more memory for execution. This will also lead to errors on occasion such as the below:
An internal error has occurred in the Analytical Engine.
When this issue is seen, Task Manager can be used to monitor the machines RAM while running the report. The RAM usage will continually increase far beyond expected levels until the report completes after a much longer than expected time, or the above error is seen.
CAUSE:This is a known issue in Strategy 10.6 and Strategy 10.4.3 and lower.
ACTION:This has been fixed in Strategy 10.7 and Strategy 10.4.4 and later. Upgrade to take advantage of the fix.
Please note a CSI change will occur for this issue when upgrading to one of the above versions to take advantage of the fix.
WORKAROUND:Depending on the specific scenario, the below options may be helpful in working around the issue.
1. To best avoid the issue, identify if the nested case statements are necessary for the desired report or calculation. These can sometimes be combined to avoid nesting or potentially simplified to reduce dependency on case statements.
2. Increasing the memory on the I-Server may allow the report to execute, but execution time will still be longer.
3. Changing the derived metrics to 'Agg from Base' in Strategy Web has been seen to help minimally with memory usage during execution.
Strategy reference numbers for this technical note are KB413433 and DE45534.
KB413433