Issues faced when using Alteryx AMP engine

[Rihan_Mohamed]

Below are issues which we faced when working with AMP engine feature. Can anyone help us to resolve the below issue and explain more about AMP feature.

1. Delimiter (\0):- We cannot use AMP engine in cases where there are spills or splits in data and single row gets split to multiple rows. In such cases we import files without splitting on delimiters and later on combine rows to create final table. AMP data is processed in parallel packets which are comprised of rows chosen randomly from data instead of grouping rows sequentially. This leads to distortion of data.
2. File Format:- AMP reads CSV and YXDB files considerable faster whereas for other data types files is almost the same.
3. Record Limit:-  There is no provision of test run by limiting records at initial run mostly to test workflow. As AMP overrides the limit and reads whole file.
4. Data Field Length:- We cannot limit the data length as AMP allocates good memory to each column so there is no room for blockage or truncation of data. Might be a challenge incase it is being used as input to database resulting in more space consumption.
5. Multiple Joins:-  We have observed that incases where we had multiple joins in the huge data sets then it created a deadlock which resulted in no output resulting in loss of 3-4 hours. This might be due to parallel sharing of resources whereas in normal case it would happen sequentially
6. Iterative Macros:- It results in unnecessary or even wrong output if iteration is too high. Errors are ignored and processing continues. We don’t have experience on this however its based on my experience from Alteryx Community.
7. Excel Output : Error while writing in multiple sheets of same excel file as AMP attempts to write multiple outputs simultaneously.

[TonyaS]

Sorry, I was in a hurry to reply earlier. Yes there is a fix for Inbound Pipe in the 2022.1 Release. Unfortunately those defects have needed to be addressed tool by tool. So when we hear about them we fix them but we may not catch them all. 

TDSL-4131 was specific to: Error “: InboundNamedPipe GetOverlappedResult: The pipe has been ended” when both ‘Use AMP Engine’ and ‘Enable Performance Profiling’ is checked with Block Until Done in macro

@ChrisTX  

If you can supply Support with a yxzp that can be used to reliably reproduce what you're seeing with YXDB files that will really help us to fix it. 

[ChrisTX]

@TonyaS for one of my complex workflows that is working perfecting in our current version (2020.4.5.12471) without AMP enabled, 

when I test the workflow in our new version (2021.4.2.35356) with AMP enabled:

the workflow does not read an Input Data Alteryx database at all, and no error is generated related to that Input Data tool

and the response from Alteryx support is (I'm translating, through my IT dept contact):

the AMP engine is more sensitive to tool errors
the workflow XML file seems to be corrupt (but no issues in 2020.4.5 with AMP off)
the only workaround to fix this workflow is to copy all tools and paste them into a new workflow

Have you seen many examples where the only workaround, to get a workflow to run as expected in 2021.4.2 with AMP, is to copy all tools to a new workflow?

I'm just wondering if I was unlucky in selecting a workflow to use for testing the new version, or if we can expect any significant number of our workflows to not run without manual intervention after we upgrade versions.

Chris

[TonyaS]

@ChrisTX 

This is definitely new information for me, not something I have heard before at all. 

I would love to circle back with Support to clarify. Could you private message me if you have the name of who communicated this? 

It does not sound right to me so I would like to ensure that any knowledge base documentation gets corrected. 

AMP is not more sensitive to tool errors in general. There were a few very specific scenarios where AMP errored when original Engine had not, we have done our best to correct that by changing them to warnings. 

If you would be able to send me a yxzp of your workflow in a private message I would be happy to try it on newer versions to see if the issue is fixed. We have done extensive improvements to AMP especially for the 2022.1 Release where AMP Engine became the default for new workflows. The 2022.3 Release will be even better to use for AMP because 2022.3 will also have 86 additional tools supported with AMP as well as a new tool that allows users to run a comparison against multiple workflows at once analyzing result differences between original Engine and AMP. 

[ChrisTX]

Thank you for the reply.  I sent you an email, to move this conversation out of DM.

I think we currently have 3 open support cases, including the one mentioned in my email.