Alteryx flow running stops at 80%

Dear all,

I am having troubles with Alteryx not completing my flow, but rather stopping at the last icon at 80% and not moving much further, or movign very very slowly (1% in 30min).

The input data is large, but not so large that it should be that slow. Anyone can help me out here - what am I doing wrong?

Best,

Kirsten

170503_IHSApril2017 Parent company merge v2.yxmd

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Accepted answers

SeanAdams

Hey @kirstenxu

Without a sample data set I can't definitively say what's causing the slow-down, but @MarqueeCrew has posted in a few different places that one of the biggest differences between Join and Find/Replace tools is that Join first has to sort; but Find/Replace does an in-place replace without sorting first.

Based on his testing, for very large unsorted data sets, find/replace is faster, so it may be worth trying that.

The other things you can do are:

use a select tool to strip out all the data you don't need before the join - that significantly reduces the memory footprint, and increases the speed
Use an auto-field tool to make the types as small as possible - again, smaller data = faster
Finally, if the FindReplace method doesn't speed you up, you can try pre-sorting the data and see if this makes it quicker.

You can find one of Mark's posts on Join vs. Find/Replace here: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Inspire-2017-Buzz/Inspire-Tips-amp-Tricks-Calling-out-our-users-to-share-their/td-p/42932/page/3

Hopefully this helps - if so, would you mind marking this as solved - if not, feel free to reply with some mocked-up test data in an alteryx flow, and we can work together as a community to get you to a solution!

All comments

chadanaber

Are you outputting to a database at any point? If so, are you using a bulk method for inserting into the database, or using the standard drivers? If you are using standard drivers, that can slow down the process significantly.

kirstenxu

I am ot outputting to any database, and I have done similar flows before - it is a fairly simple join tool, but somehow it just runs extremely extremey slow.

DanHall

Were you able to find a solution to your issue? We've run into a similar issue this week, where an existing workflow writing to a TDE output with a normal run time around 45 minutes total began clocking in the 2-4 hour range. The majority of the process time is tied to the writing of the TDE output once it is >80% complete. As I write this, my TDE has gone from 94% an hour ago to 97%. The truly baffling part is that the task manager shows the CPU idle process in the 70-97% range and the Tableau Data Engine running in the mid to high 20% range.

j_acon

Check you are not joining null values, I have seen null joins that make the workflow go on forever.

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