Weaver Engine Scheduling

Weaver engine scheduling

A DataMapper engine extracts data from a data file. A Merge engine merges the template and the data to create Email and Web output, or to create an intermediary file for Printed output. The intermediary file is in turn used by a Weaver engine to prepare the Print output.

This preference page determines the number of Weaver engines launched, as well as their speed, when generating the output.

The Weaver Engine is used to convert one specific job into the Print output of your choice. You can only ever use a single Weaver engine to convert one specific job to whatever output you want.
The Weaver Engine pool is also used by the Datamapper when importing PCL/PS/PDF and AFP data.

When you want to create output for multiple jobs in parallel, you will need to increase the number of weaver engines.
Too many engines will waste precious RAM and CPU cycles to idle processes, whilst too few could create a bottleneck.

Each Weaver engine requires a speed unit from the available speed unit reservation pool. If no speed unit is available, the job will be queued even if an engine is available.

For an explanation of the various engines, the terminology and their settings, see Engine configuration.
For some performance tips, see Performance considerations.

Changes made to the following settings will be applied on the run (when the Apply button is pressed), and do not require the OLConnect_Server service to be restarted.

Use one internal engine: Check this option to limit to a single internal engine. Only use this option on computers that run below the recommended System requirements, or demo machines. With external engines, both the engines and the server have more memory and can run faster.

Total engines available: Read-only box indicating the current number of engines that are active or available.

Local engines launched: Enter the total number of Weaver Engines desired on this server. When changing the number of engines, it is necessary to save this dialog (Apply) to actually apply the changes.
It is recommended that you increase the number of Weaver engines to at least 2 engines when using the PCL, PS or AFP inputs within the DataMapper.

Speed units launched: Read-only box indicating the number of speed units launched.

Limit in license: Read-only box indicating the maximum number of speed units useable for producing output.

Reserved Count: Read-only box indicating the total number of "Reserved" engines, as set in the Speed unit reservations topic below.

Memory per engine (mb): Specify the maximum amount of random access memory (RAM) in megabytes that will be used per engine in order to make optimal use of the machine's memory.

This setting only controls the maximum size of the Java heap memory that an engine can use; the total amount of memory that will used by an engine is actually a bit higher.

Also keep in mind that the Connect Server and the operating system itself will need memory to keep running.

Restart after group:

Time limit (mins): Due to a currently un-fixable memory leak in some libraries used by PlanetPress Connect, it is necessary to restart our engines after a certain amount of time.
The default is generally considered sufficient for all our clients.
Only change on the advice of a technical support agent.
Memory limit (mb): An engine restart will be performed when the total amount of memory used by the engine process exceeds the defined maximum.

The default value is 0 megabytes, which means there is no limit.
If this setting must be used due to memory problems it is recommended to set it to at least 1.5GB or 225% of the Memory per engine (mb) setting (whichever is higher).

The maximum for this setting is 1,024,000MB, which roughly equates to 1TB.

Note that the actual memory usage is reported in the "Working Set" column in Windows' Process Explorer.

Parallel speed units per job group: If a specific type of job has more than one parallel speed unit assigned to it, that multiplies its speed, however it reduces the number of jobs that can be run simultaneously, since each engine needs at least one speed unit in order to run (see Speed quota: PPM and speed units).
When you do run 2 or more Weaver engines, parallel output creation is only possible if each engine has access to speed units. Therefore you will need to divide the available parallel speed units between medium and large print jobs.
If a large job is using all speed units to produce output, then any other print job will be queued until the large job is processed, even if a Weaver engine is available.

Parallel speed units per medium job: Enter the number of speed units to use when handling a medium print job.
Parallel speed units per large job: Enter the number of speed units to use when handling a large print job.

Parallel engines per job group: This area determines how many Weaver engines are used for each print job of a particular size. Small print jobs always get just one engine.

Parallel engines per medium print job: Enter the number of engines that will co-operate on a medium print job.
Parallel engines per large print job: Enter the number of engines that will co-operate on a large print job.

Speed unit reservations:

Floating: Edit box for selecting the number of floating speed units that can be used for any type of job.
Small job speed unit reservations: Enter a number of speed units reserved for small print jobs.
Medium job speed unit reservations: Enter a number of speed units reserved for medium print jobs.
Large job speed unit reservations: Enter a number of speed units reserved for large print jobs.

Maximum speed units:

Small job limit: Enter the maximum number of speed units that can run small print jobs.
Medium job limit: Enter the maximum number of speed units that can run medium print jobs.
Large job limit: Enter the maximum number of speed units that can run large print jobs.