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Siebel Analytics Installation and Configuration Guide > NQSConfig.ini File Reference > Parameter and Syntax Descriptions >

Parameters in the General Section

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The parameters in the General section contains general server default parameters, including localization and internationalization, temporary space and memory allocation, and other default parameters used to determine how data is returned from the Siebel Analytics Server to a client.

NOTE:  The settings for the parameters LOCALE, SORT_ORDER_LOCALE, SORT_TYPE and CASE_SENSITIVE_CHARACTER_COMPARISON, described below, are interrelated. They help determine how the Siebel Analytics Server sorts data.

LOCALE

Specifies the locale in which data is returned from the server. This parameter also determines the localized names of days and months. For example, if the LOCALE="greek", then names of days and months will be returned from the server in Greek. The localized message strings are written to various log files as well as returned to the user as error messages.

The supported values for LOCALE and SORT_ORDER_LOCALE are:

Chinese-simplified

Chinese-traditional

Czech

Danish

Dutch

English-USA

Finnish

French

German

Greek

Hebrew

Italian

Japanese

Korean

Portuguese

Portuguese-Brazilian

Spanish

Swedish

The default is English-USA. You need to explicitly set the value of this parameter if you want to use a setting other than english-usa.

Example: LOCALE = "english-usa" ;

If you want to override the language specified in the XML file, use Analytics Catalog Manager to substitute the language extension shown in the following list:

Language Extension	Language
cs	Czech
da	Danish
de	German
en	English
es	Spanish
fi	Finnish
fr	French
he	Hebrew
it	Italian
ja	Japanese
ko	Korean
nl	Dutch
pt	Portuguese
pt-br	Brazilian Portuguese
sv	Swedish
zh	Chinese (Simplified)
zh-tw	Chinese (Traditional)

For more information about Analytics Catalog Manager and language extensions, refer to Siebel Analytics Web Administration Guide.

SORT_ORDER_LOCALE

This parameter is used to help determine whether the Siebel Analytics Server can function-ship an ORDER BY clause (used in sorting) to a back-end database.

In the Siebel Analytics Server Administration Tool, the Features table (from the Features tab of the Database dialog) specifies the features and functions that the back-end database supports. The settings for SORT_ORDER_LOCALE in the Features table and in the NQSConfig.ini file should match only if the back-end database and the Siebel Analytics Server sort data in the same way.

For the back-end database and the Siebel Analytics Server to sort data the same way, they must be in agreement on these parameters:

Base language (the LOCALE and SORT_ORDER_LOCAL parameters)
Case considerations (the CASE_SENSITIVE_CHARACTER_COMPARISON parameter)
Binary versus linguistic comparisons (the SORT_TYPE parameter)

Only if the back-end database and the Siebel Analytics Server have equivalent settings in these areas will the SORT_ORDER_LOCALE entries in the Features table and in the NQSConfig.ini file match.

The default value for SORT_ORDER_LOCALE in both the Features table and in the NQSConfig.ini file is english-usa.

If the Siebel Analytics Server and the back-end database sort data differently, the Features table entry SORT_ORDER_LOCALE for the back-end database needs to be set to a different value than english-usa. Failure to do so can result in wrong answers when multi-database joins are used, or errors using the Union, Intersect and Except operators, which all rely on consistent sorting between the back-end server and the Siebel Analytics Server.

Every database defined in the Physical Layer in the Siebel Analytics Server Administration Tool has a features table associated with it. If you want to override the default value in the Features table for a particular type of back-end database, you need to do it for all occurrences of it in the Physical Layer.

Example: SORT_ORDER_LOCALE = "english-usa" ;

SORT_TYPE

Specifies the type of sort to perform. The default value is BINARY. Binary sorts are faster than nonbinary sorts.

Valid values are BINARY and DEFAULT. If you specify DEFAULT, a nonbinary sort is performed; this yields better sort results for data that contains accented characters.

Example: SORT_TYPE = "BINARY" ;

CASE_SENSITIVE_CHARACTER_COMPARISON

Specifies whether the Siebel Analytics Server differentiates between uppercase and lowercase characters when performing comparison operations. Valid values are ON and OFF. When set to OFF, case is ignored. When set to ON, case is considered for comparisons. For binary sorts, case sensitivity for the server and for the back-end database should set the same way.

Example: CASE_SENSITIVE_CHARACTER_COMPARISON = OFF ;

NULL_VALUES_SORT_FIRST

Specifies if NULL values sort before other values (ON) or after (OFF). ON and OFF are the only valid values. The value of NULL_VALUES_SORT_FIRST should conform to the underlying database. If there are multiple underlying databases that sort NULL values differently, set the value to correspond to the database that is used the most in queries.

Example: NULL_VALUES_SORT_FIRST= OFF ;

DATE_TIME_DISPLAY_FORMAT

Specifies the format for how datetime stamps are input to and output from the Siebel Analytics Server.

Example: DATE_TIME_DISPLAY_FORMAT = "yyyy/mm/dd hh:mi:ss" ;

DATE_DISPLAY_FORMAT

Specifies the format for how dates are input to and output from the Siebel Analytics Server.

NOTE:  Specify the year as either 2-digit (yy) or 4-digit (yyyy). Separators can be any character except y, m, or d.

Example: DATE_DISPLAY_FORMAT = "yyyy/mm/dd" ;

TIME_DISPLAY_FORMAT

Specifies the format for how times are input to and output from the Siebel Analytics Server.

Example: TIME_DISPLAY_FORMAT = "hh:mi:ss" ;

WORK_DIRECTORY_PATHS

Specifies one or more directories for temporary space. Each directory listed needs to be an existing fully-qualified, writable directory pathname, with double quotes ( " ) surrounding the pathname. Specify mapped directories only. UNC path names and network mapped drives are allowed only if the service runs under a qualified user account. To change the account under which the service is running, see To change the account under which a Windows service runs. Specify multiple directories with a comma separated list. Valid values are any fully qualified pathname to an existing, writable directory.

For optimum performance, temporary directories should reside on high performance storage devices. If you specify more than one directory, they should reside on different drives.

Syntax: WORK_DIRECTORY_PATHS = "<full_directory_path_1>" [, "<full_directory_path_2>"{, "<full_directory_path_n>"}] ;

Example 1: WORK_DIRECTORY_PATHS = "C:\Temp" ;

Example 2: WORK_DIRECTORY_PATHS = "D:\temp", "F:\temp" ;

NOTE:  Specifying more than one directory per drive does not improve performance because file I/O takes place through the same I/O controller. In general, specify only one directory per disk drive. Specifying multiple directories on different drives will improve the overall I/O throughput of the Siebel Analytics Server because internally, the processing files are allocated using a round robin algorithm that balances the /O load across the given disk drives.

SORT_MEMORY_SIZE

Specifies the maximum amount of memory to be used for each sort operation. Multiple operations can each use memory up to the value specified. The limit for SORT_MEMORY_SIZE is determined by the physical memory of the server machine and on the number of sort operations that might occur simultaneously. Specify KB for kilobytes, MB for megabytes, and no units for bytes. For more information, see the section How the SIZE Parameters Affect Performance.

Example: SORT_MEMORY_SIZE = 4 MB ;

SORT_BUFFER_INCREMENT_SIZE

Specifies the increment that the sort memory size is increased by as more memory is needed. As more memory is required, the size will increase by the value specified until it reaches the value of SORT_MEMORY_SIZE. For more information, see the section How the SIZE Parameters Affect Performance.

Example: SORT_BUFFER_INCREMENT_SIZE = 256 KB ;

VIRTUAL_TABLE_PAGE_SIZE

Specifies the size of a memory page for the Siebel Analytics Server internal processing. A higher value reduces I/O but increases memory usage, especially in a multi-user environment. For more information, see the section How the SIZE Parameters Affect Performance.

Example: VIRTUAL_TABLE_PAGE_SIZE = 128 KB ;

DATA_SOURCE_BULK_FETCH_SIZE

Specifies the maximum size of a bulk fetch page for retrieving data from a data source. For more information, see the section How the SIZE Parameters Affect Performance.

Example: DATA_SOURCE_BULK_FETCH_SIZE = 128 KB ;

How the SIZE Parameters Affect Performance

This section explains the interrelationships among the SIZE parameters and how they affect performance.

SORT_MEMORY_SIZE and SORT_BUFFER_INCREMENT_SIZE

The size specified by SORT_MEMORY_SIZE sets the upper limit on how large the sorting buffer can be in the Siebel Analytics Server. If this limit is exceeded, data is sorted in allotments of the size set by SORT_MEMORY_SIZE and the sorted sets are merged together. For example, suppose SORT_MEMORY_SIZE is set to 4 MB and the size of the data to be sorted is 32 MB. The server will perform the sort once per each 4 MB of data, for a total of eight sort operations, and then merge the results into a single result set. This technique allows the Siebel Analytics Server to sort data of indefinite size.

The merge process itself is generally not costly in terms of resources, but it does include a read and write of each result set in a temporary file. To reduce the time this takes, increase the SORT_MEMORY_SIZE. This parameter can be tuned over time by taking into consideration the data size of the query and the number of concurrent users.

SORT_BUFFER_INCREMENT_SIZE

This parameter defines the increment in which SORT_MEMORY_SIZE should be reached. For example, suppose SORT_MEMORY_SIZE is set to 4 MB and the data to be sorted is just one megabyte. As data is fed into the sort routine, the size of the sort buffer increases only by the increment size, rather than the full size allowed by SORT_MEMORY_SIZE. This mechanism allows the Siebel Analytics Server to sort smaller result sets efficiently without wasting memory.

VIRTUAL_TABLE_PAGE_SIZE

Several operations—sort, join, union and database fetch—can require memory resources beyond those available to the Siebel Analytics Server. To manage this condition, the server uses a virtual table management mechanism that provides a buffering scheme for processing these operations. When the amount of data exceeds the VIRTUAL_TABLE_PAGE_SIZE, the remaining data is buffered in a temporary file and placed in the virtual table as processing continues. This mechanism supports dynamic memory sizes and ensures that any row can be obtained dynamically for processing queries.

When VIRTUAL_TABLE_PAGE_SIZE is increased, I/O operations are reduced. Complex queries may use 20 to 30 virtual tables, while simple queries may not even require virtual tables. The default size of 128 KB is a reasonable size when one considers that the size for virtual paging in Windows NT is 64 KB. This parameter can be tuned depending on the number of concurrent users and the average query complexity. In general, setting the size higher than 256 KB does not yield a corresponding increase in throughput due to the 64 KB size limit of Windows NT system buffers, as each I/O still goes through the system buffers.

DATA_SOURCE_BULK_FETCH_SIZE

This parameter is for use in the database gateways. It sets the bulk fetch buffer size. This is currently set internally to its default value of 128 KB; any other setting is ignored.

USE_LONG_MONTH_NAMES

This specifies whether month names will be returned as full names, such as JANUARY and FEBRUARY, or as three-letter abbreviations, such as JAN and FEB. Valid values are YES and NO. Specify YES to have month names returned as full names or NO to have months names returned as three-letter abbreviations. The default value is NO.

Example: USE_LONG_MONTH_NAMES = NO ;

USE_LONG_DAY_NAMES

This specifies whether day names will be returned as full names, such as MONDAY and TUESDAY, or as three-letter abbreviations, such as MON and TUE. Valid values are YES and NO. Specify YES to have day names returned as full names or NO to have day names returned as three-letter abbreviations. The default value is NO.

Example: USE_LONG_DAY_NAMES = NO ;

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