Engines preferences

Background

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. A Merge engine merges the template and the data 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 page appears in the Designer Window > Preferences dialog. It allows control over Merge and Weaver (output) engines.

Settings

Configure engine options

  • Tasks handled by:
    Select how Connect jobs are to be processed. The choices are between:
    • Engines (separate processes): Select to have a number of separate engines (for Merging and Weaver, as appropriate) to process jobs.

      Note: This is the best choice for production environments.

    • Connect Designer (uses less memory): Select to have a single Connect Designer handle processing.

      Note: This option should only really ever be used for low memory, non-production (testing) environments.

Number of engines

This group is only available if Engines were selected as the processing architecture .

  • Merge Engines selection: Select the desired amount of Merge Engines.

    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. A Merge engine merges the template and the data to create an intermediary file for Printed output. The intermediary file is in turn used by a Weaver engine to prepare the Print output.

    Generally, launching a relatively high number of Merge engines results in better performance, because content creation is relatively time-consuming.

    Note: The OL Connect installer automatically sets the number of Merge Engines based upon the machine CPUs/Processors (the number of cores) and available Memory (RAM). The default setting will likely be enough for most users.

    However, virtual machines can provide an exception to this. In some virtual environments the OL Connect installer cannot accurately determine the number of logical cores actually available to the virtual machine, and will thus use a lesser number than that which could actually be supported.


    You can confirm how many Merge engines are running on your machine by running Task Manager and locating the mergeengine.exe entries in your process list.
    Note that there will be an extra Merge and Weaver engine in your task manager if you are running Designer.

    The Merge engine is responsible for the plugins Create Print Content, Create Email Content and Create Web Content.

    License restrictions only apply to the Merge engine when creating Email or Web content. They do not apply for Create Print Content. This means you are allowed to start an infinite amount of Merge engines on any given Connect Sever to run print jobs, but you will be restricted to a set number of Merge engines for your Email and HTML jobs.
  • Weaver Engines selection: This option is read-only in OL Connect Designer Preferences.
    Select the desired amount of Weaver (Output) Engines.

    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. A Merge engine merges the template and the data to create an intermediary file for Printed output. The intermediary file is in turn used by a Weaver engine to prepare the Print output.

    Adding extra Weaver (Output) engine(s) might be useful when large Print jobs are to be run simultaneously with smaller Print jobs. However, too many running engines will waste precious RAM and CPU cycles to idle processes, whilst too few could create a bottleneck.

Memory


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.

The selections made here will apply to all Engines of that type.

Note: These settings only control 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.

By default, each engine is set to use up to a predetermined amount of RAM. To make optimum use of a machine's capabilities it might be useful to increase the amount of memory that the various engines can use.

Here are some simple scenarios where you might want to increase an Engine's memory usage:

  • For complex templates with a lot of pages per document, there is a chance that Merge engines will run better with more memory.

  • The maximum memory usage of a Weaver engine can be relevant for jobs with heavy graphics; or for jobs that use Cut & Stack impositioning; or for jobs using particular variables that entail page buffering (see Content variables).

The options available in the Memory group are:

  • Merge Engines (MB) selection: Select the desired amount of Merge Engine memory.

    For complex templates with a lot of pages per document, there is a chance that Merge engines will run better with more memory.

  • Weaver Engine (MB) selection:
    Select the desired amount of Weaver (Output) Engine memory.

    When running really large jobs, it often pays to increase Weaver memory allocation, even if only for the duration of the production job(s).

    The maximum memory usage of a Weaver engine can be relevant for jobs with heavy graphics; or for jobs that use Cut & Stack impositioning; or for jobs using particular variables that entail page buffering (see Content variables).

Configure merge engine options

  • On the Merge engine tab you can set the Template reuse limit. Each merge engine keeps the resources of the most recently used templates open in memory, for performance reasons. The template reuse limit determines how many times those resources get reused before they are recreated. The default value is 100. A low value is more appropriate for large jobs, while a high value is more appropriate for small jobs.

Buttons

The Engines preferences also provides you with buttons to :

  • Restore Defaults. This option restores the preferences to Defaults. This applies to the current Preferences page only, but not other Preferences.

  • Apply: This option applies the settings made within the current Preferences page, but does not close the Preferences dialog.