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jbennett1-Visitor
1-Visitor
October 18, 2012
Question

Save Vs. Save and Upload

  • October 18, 2012
  • 21 replies
  • 16975 views

Does anyone have an opinion on this or have a pros vs cons of each?


    21 replies

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    D
    DonSenchuk12-Amethyst
    12-Amethyst
    October 19, 2012

    With all due respect to Dan's position, there are a couple things I'd like to point out.


    First, the customers I've had to deal with generally don't give a crap about being educated in this regard. And by customers I mean the coworkers I have to support. The engineers and designers want to get on with designing. The drafters just want to get on with model/drawing creation and clean-up. The checkers just want to get on with checking. The people assigned various roles in workflows want to get on with their job.


    I've had a few over the years ask what upload does out of real curiosity. I've yet to see one get through the explanation without losing interest. As long as the software works from their vantage point they don't care about the rest.


    Second, if an organizations systems are so close to the edge that the automatic upload causes a problem due to bandwidth, disk space or table space, there are more serious and immediate problems to deal with than this.

      L
      Lohbauer1-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      October 19, 2012
      Dan,

      You make a solid point at a philosophical level. An educated user will get more from the tool the better they understand its functionality. However when we migrated from IntraLink 3.4 to PDMLink 9.1 last year it was a shocking change for some users. During the training process the notion of Client and Server side workspaces was not easily grasped due to the IntraLink paradigm they had been accustomed to. It is an ongoing training challenge still. So I set the ‘dm_upload_automatic’ to yes as a security measure. This has proven to be a good choice in many cases when users for whatever reason find their local caches corrupted.

      In time once our users have fully adopted and I’m comfortable they ‘get it’ perhaps the setting will be changed. While it does consume bandwidth and I do find myself doing a little more vault maintenance, at this point in our adoption it makes too much sense not to.

      Bob Lohbauer
      D
      DamianCastillo1-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      October 19, 2012

      I am new to all this and currently tweaking our Windchill 10.1 configuration. I have no data migrated yet.


      We did choose to automatically upload with each save because our assemblies are small and we have a Fiber backbone that is very fast.


      You simply need to consider your infrastructure and make the best call for your situation. We have the speed and our files are not large so we decided the server side workspace gives us peace of mind that our work will not be lost due to corruption or a users computer crashing.


      I am still learning, so I really enjoy all the feedback from veterans.


      "Too many people walk around like Clark Kent, because they don't realize they can Fly like Superman"

      B
      BenLoosli23-Emerald III
      23-Emerald III
      October 19, 2012
      This slide from our Windchill training helps show what each option does and how the file is stored.

      [cid:image002.png@01CDADE4.2E7E72C0]

      This slide illustrates how data moves through the system from a Pro/E session to a Windchill shared folder
      The solid lines show the main purpose of the different commands (e.g. checkin moves data from a users private folder to a shares folder)
      Dotted lines show where the Wildfire integration is optimized to allow multiple operations to happen with one end user action (For example, if the user checks the "Open in Pro/E" checkbox on checkout, objects will be checked out to the user's private folder and files will be downloaded and opened in the user's Pro/E session)
      There are four locations that file data can exist in, and the Wildfire integration is responsible for marshalling that data between these locations as a result of user actions

      Check Out

      During a check out operation, data is transferred from the Windchill database to the workspace. Optionally, if you choose to open the object, the data is then transferred from the workspace to Pro/ENGINEER.

      Check In

      During a check in operation, data is transferred from the workspace to the Windchill PDM database. If you check in an object directly from Pro/ENGINEER, the data is transferred from Pro/ENGINEER to the workspace and then to the Windchill PDM database.

      Upload

      During an upload operation, data is transferred from the client-side workspace to the server-side workspace.

      Download or Update

      A download or update operation transfers data from the PDM database to the workspace. You perform an update, to update existing and potentially out-of-date object information in the workspace from the PDM database.
      Process for updating objects in WS:
      Use "Update" if object current status is "Checked-In"
      User "Download" if object current status is "Checked-Out"
      B
      BenLoosli23-Emerald III
      23-Emerald III
      October 19, 2012
      I will also disagree with Dan and join Steve, Don and Robert in the use of dm_upload_automatic set to yes.
      The users here have been taught to look at the messages when they save a file to see if the upload has been completed successfully. There are many instances where the save completes, but the upload doesn't. This allows them to investigate the reason for the failed upload and correct it before the issue gets worse. In some cases an upload from Pro/e save may fail, but an upload from the client-side workspace can go through.

      We are on a fiber network to the workstations and contained mostly in one building. Bandwidth is not an issue. Disk space is cheap enough these days that that is a non-issue. The only 'extra' work is to remove unreferenced files from the vaults more than once a year.

      Thank you,

      Ben H. Loosli
      USEC, INC.
      L
      Lohbauer1-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      October 19, 2012
      Ben,

      FYI, I have the unreferenced files scheduled to be removed weekly.

      Bob Lohbauer
      J
      jbennett1-VisitorAuthor
      1-Visitor
      October 19, 2012

      Thanks for the responses. I always push the full check-in as the safest method, but I also try to expain the differences between the save vs. upload options (which most of the users get a glazed look on their faces because they don't really care how it works, they just want it to work all the time).


      Personally I always played it safe and performed the save and upload instead of the save only when I was part of product design. The other issue that I face with the CAD users I support is thatI have only been the CAD admin for about 5 months. I used to work under alot of the people I know train and support so the advice on best practices that I offer are often looked over or not taken seriously.


      John Bennett


      CAD Business Admin


      Lifetime Products


      www.lifetime.com

      L
      LEONIDGUREVICH1-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      October 21, 2012

      I want to check next spelling - "dm_upload_automatic YES", is it true?

      I have in my config.pro next row: "dm_upload_objects automatic"

      [cid:image002.jpg@01CDAF5C.185666A0]

      D
      DonSenchuk12-Amethyst
      12-Amethyst
      October 22, 2012

      Automatic is correct. I must have remembered an older version of that config being YES.



      (Or maybe even a different config, knowing how my memory works!)




      In Reply to LEONID GUREVICH:



      I want to check next spelling - "dm_upload_automatic YES", is it true?

      I have in my config.pro next row: "dm_upload_objects automatic"


      J
      jhowell20101-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      November 2, 2012

      A user at our site saved & upladed his files. He then cleared his workspace & deleted his cache without thinking to check-in the objects. Doesn't deleting the cache only affect the local workspace? How do you recover the data from the server-side workspace when nothing is showing up?

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