What is Workflow Manager doing when it creates a job?

[deleted-user-7uOyUeQXbkI0]

We have noticed that it is taking anywhere form 5-6 minutes to create a job in our Workflow Manager database.  I have found that the overall complexity of the workflow/job seems to affect the job creation time because a job type that I use for troubleshooting that has a much simpler workflow takes only about a minute at most to create.  What exactly is Workflow Manager doing that is causing it to take so long for these more complex jobs?

[XiaomengZheng]

Hi Ryan,

What version of Workflow Manager are you using? How complicated is your workflow? How many steps?

You can increase your log level from 3 to 5. Create new jobs and check the logs and see if anything indicated that CopyWorkflowXML command spending extra amount of time. 

Thanks,

Meggie

[Anonymous User]

Workflow Manager is only creating rows in your enterprise table. When there is slowness of this magnitude it is usually a problem with the database itself.

A good test is to create a seperate table in the Workflow Manager database and update a series of records outside of Workflow Manager in Arcmap or ArcCatalog. It will likely also be slow. 

If it isn't but you have over 50,000 jobs in your system then it may be that the tables are not optimized. You can add indexed by following the procedures in the database guide in the install.

[deleted-user-7uOyUeQXbkI0 · Accepted solution]

At the time we were using 10.4.1. 

I submitted a ticket with Esri support about this issue (Case #02078008) and it turned out the issue was related to a known bug with 10.4.x. (#BUG-000105811) 

The issue is when WMX is performing the step "CopyWorkflowXML" in the job creation.  With 10.4.x that step can be affected greatly by the complexity of the job type's workflow.  The bug states that this was fixed at 10.5, but that is inaccurate. Testing shows that it was only fixed at 10.6.  A hotfix was created for a customer for 10.5 and that is why the BUG erroneously states that it was fixed at 10.5.  At 10.6 and beyond the "CopyWorkflowXML" step takes significantly less time, minutes down to a second or so.

[Anonymous User]

Great, thanks for the follow-up