Join Tool Performance Issues

[SamDesk]

Hello,

Does anyone notice a slowdown in the join tool, post configuration? It seems to be worse for me based on the number of joins configured within the tool. The datastream width and/or length doesn't seem to affect the performance, which leads me to believe it may be a bug with the tool itself and possibly a graphical one with how the join tool displays the field drop-downs used in the join configuration.

For the above workflow, the pre-configuration join tool (the one at the bottom) opens nearly instantly, the next one up after a couple of seconds, and the one at the top 2-4 seconds.

Sam 🙂

[MichalM]

@SamDesk 

I can see the difference in performance and a bit of a lag in the top join you shared but it's nowhere near 5-7 second - more like 2s. The tool needs to read in the metadata which could explain the delay.  

[SamDesk]

Hi @MichalM,

Perhaps 5-7 seconds was a bit over-exaggerated; it's closer to 2-4 seconds but still definitely noticeable. I have a workflow that has several join tools that have 15-20 join fields configured and they are even slower.

I take your point about the tool reading in the metadata but would we not expect to see this across several tools for the same data? For the same data going through Select, Summarise, Append Fields, etc. I don't experience any slowdown; it seems to be localised to the Join tool.

Sam 🙂

[JosephSerpis · Accepted solution]

Hi @SamDesk a technique I use when I am joining on multiple fields is I create a URN field with a formula tool that is concatenation of all the fields I want to join on. This mean there is only one field you need to join with so saves time going through and selecting multiple fields to join. I also find it helps to troubleshoot any issues with the data such as joining onto more than one record as you can easily test if your data is truly unique.  

[SamDesk]

Hi @JosephSerpis,

That is a simple yet intuitive solution, thank you.

Although this doesn't fix the inherent problem that the join tool seems to suffer from, it is a great workaround for now! Hopefully, support can feedback the issue to the devs and it gets looked at for a future release.

Sam 🙂