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SOLVED

Workflow file is suddenly huge

DawnG1111
5 - Atom

I created 3 workflows locally which turned out to be around 118 KB each. The third was dependent on the first two, so when it was time to share these with our customer, I copied them up to the LAN, put two of the workflows into their own containers, copied them and connected these two containers to each other, and then used the result as input to the third (along with changing the location of some of the other source data files). When I saved this, it ballooned up to 7.2 MB.

 

Has anyone else had this happen to them? Is there anything I can do to get the workflow back to a normal size? As they are it takes a while to load and to save these.

10 REPLIES 10
MarqueeCrew
20 - Arcturus
20 - Arcturus
If you include a big text input or if you have a big picture inside of the workflow, you’ll create a huge yxmd.

Check to see if there are images stored as comment boxes or the presence of text inputs and that is likely the removable source.

Cheers,

Mark
Alteryx ACE & Top Community Contributor

Chaos reigns within. Repent, reflect and restart. Order shall return.
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DawnG1111
5 - Atom

Thank you for your reply, Marquee! I did copy the Container (which contains Comment Boxes) and paste it into the third workflow. But there are no pictures or text inputs in any of the workflows. Saved separately they were each under 300 KB. The data files I am opening as Inputs are substantial (3.8 - 200 MB), but I don't think this is what you are referring to. Am I misunderstanding? (I am quite new to Alteryx!) How can I tell if there are images stored as comment boxes?

MarqueeCrew
20 - Arcturus
20 - Arcturus
I wonder if maybe you have a dB input that is checked as cache if that could cause this with a cut and paste?
Alteryx ACE & Top Community Contributor

Chaos reigns within. Repent, reflect and restart. Order shall return.
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DawnG1111
5 - Atom

All of the data inputs are pipe-delimited text files. If they are cached, it was by accident. Can you tell me how I would check this?

MarqueeCrew
20 - Arcturus
20 - Arcturus
I can look via WebEx tomorrow. Please PM me your email and a couple of time options.

Cheers,

Mark
Alteryx ACE & Top Community Contributor

Chaos reigns within. Repent, reflect and restart. Order shall return.
Please Subscribe to my youTube channel.
anthony
11 - Bolide

Try opening the YXMD workflow file in a TEXT editor and see if you see large sets of lines that are repeated.  It is a XML file so you should see stuff that looks like this.

 

This actually a large select tool xml node. It has 190 columns so it is 190 lines long.

If you cut and paste any text into text input tool that becomes part of the xml and can become large.

 

Capture.PNG

 

 

DawnG1111
5 - Atom

Thank you both for your ideas! I looked into the XML and noticed this:

 

 <Field name="RepID224" size="1073741823" source="Formula: Right([ERS_USERNAME], 6)" type="V_WString" />

 

The Multi-Row Formula Tool we are using wasn't configured properly in our first couple of attempts to run, so it generated MANY extra Fields and then we use a Cross-Tab tool...  No wonder it was taking so long to run! I selected the Join Multiple tool after the Cross-Tabs, then selected "Forget all missing fields" and this seems to have cleared up the issue. The Workflow is back down to 220 KB.

MarqueeCrew
20 - Arcturus
20 - Arcturus
Thanks for sharing!
Alteryx ACE & Top Community Contributor

Chaos reigns within. Repent, reflect and restart. Order shall return.
Please Subscribe to my youTube channel.
danielkresina
9 - Comet

I just had this happen too.  I finally tracked it down to an Excel input.  Apparently the used range property in Excel had gotten confused into thinking there was data way out to the furthest column to the right in the excel sheet which obviously resulted in an enormous field list being passed into Alteryx.

 

Apparently that ballooned the XML and resulted in the whole file coming to a crawl.  This is good to know for future cases.

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