Sharepoint tool much faster when downloading?

[CullenJ]

I have a workflow that reads in a yxdb file of about 700 MB, does a little bit of processing, and outputs a much smaller csv. It runs on my computer in around 30 seconds using a normal input tool. However, I need to run it on the Alteryx Server, which means having to access the file via the sharepoint tools.

Replacing the input tool with a sharepoint input tool set up the default way ("Read Data from Files"), I tried running it and gave up after 30 minutes.

I changed the sharepoint input tool to "Download file locally for later processing", which outputs a table with the location of the downloaded version. I made a quick little macro to read the file in as below (side question: is there an already existing tool to do this? Read a file from the location specified in the input?)

 

Using "Download file locally for later processing" plus this macro runs successfully in about 3 minutes 30 seconds.

Is this something weird going on with our setup, or do others have this problem as well?

Side complaint: part of the reason I have this workflow is that the sharepoint tools (which we use to get data onto and off of the Alteryx server) can only handle xlsx, csv, and yxdb files - but only yxdb has decent compression. However, other tools (like Power BI) can't read yxdb, so I have to use alteryx to convert it back to one of the other bulky file formats. If the sharepoint tool supported other formats (like parquet) this would be less of an issue.

[apathetichell]

I don't think this is a you thing ---- as much as a Sharepoint is nightmare. Alteryx doesn't release their python connector code anymore --- so I can't speak to the Sharepoint implementation --- but I'm unusually charitable on Alteryx on all things Sharepoint related.

[CullenJ]

Sounds about right - even MS Fabric doesn't have great Sharepoint integration so I'm guessing the Microsoft devs have issues with it too