Inspiring

Question

CPD bloat

Forum|Forum|18 years ago
September 11, 2007
24 replies
4067 views

We have a large X5 webhelp project (5000+ topics) with a problem: the cpd file bloats up to an unmanageable size just within one day's time. Starting with a clean cpd of about 3-4 MB, rebuilt from scratch in the morning (which takes quite a while!), the cpd quickly grows with each save until by the end of the day it is too big to work properly. It easily grows to 25 MB, and yesterday the writer reported that it went to over 40 MB!

The writer is doing a lot of structural work like adding/deleting/renaming/moving files and folders, so this is probably a worst-case scenario for impacting the cpd. But it's work that needs to be done, so we're stuck for it.

Aside from the obvious solution of breaking the project down into subprojects, is there any other way to deal with this problem? I've just tried to "compact and repair" the cpd file in Access, but haven't had a chance to test and see if that works any differently than simply deleting the cpd file and letting it rebuild. Also, we are moving to RH6; is that likely to help this problem at all?

Thanks for any suggestions...

G

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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Cool thought. Wouldn't whether the disk is formatted FAT or NTFS be an issue in that case?

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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Hmm. Not the phrase I would have used but when I once complimented someone on a bodge that got a car going, they said it was not a bodge but "site engineering" so what do I know?

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Captiv8r

Legend

Hi all

Just a possible bit of insight here. The actual size of the bloat may vary, depending on your hard drive. This has to do with the size of the clusters that comprise the actual storage space used. For example, one may have a file that is only a few bytes in size. But in order to save that file on the hard drive, a complete cluster is required. Granted, I'm no maven of cluster knowledge, but lets say a cluster is 32,000 bytes in size. That small file that is maybe only 3 bytes long would report as consuming 32,000 bytes, as that is the smallest cluster size. So if you increased the file to perhaps 32,001 bytes, it would then report as consuming 64,000 bytes.

I'm thinking that maybe this may account for it?

Just thinking out loud... Rick

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

It's my pleasure when people appreciate it. Just gets annoying when others take it for granted.

If you do go the merged help route. There's some stuff in my merged webhelp topic about splitting a project.

Still finding that amount of bloat hard to figure.

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GravensteinAuthor

Inspiring

I'll be sure to check your site for tips on blowing apart projects.

Yes, it does seem like a lot of bloat, doesn't it? I need to look into it some more. In particular, I intend to compare this project with other analagous projects. That should be interesting.

G

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

You obviously appreciate the CPD is an Access database. Personally I think compacting is safer as deletion requires a rebuild with the attendant risk of loss of information. Compacting should avoid that. Neither can be guaranteed so save a copy somewhere safe.

You also appreciate why it is growing but I must admit that whilst I have no yardstick, that does seem to be high.

I use merged webhelp and tend to regard 4/5000 files as being the limit. There is actually no real limit as much depends on content but that's a reasonable guideline.

I don't think there is much else you can do, except as you say break it down into smaller projects. Presumably the massive restructure is a passing thing so perhaps easier to just live with it?

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GravensteinAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks for the input, Peter. While the structural rework will end, there's enough activity in the project that our problems won't end there. I think I'll have to look for ways to decrease the size of the project and cpd, whether it be through merging or by some other means. I might be able to thin out some types of links (ones that the end user doesn't see anyway), and maybe some cleaning up of that ilk would help the cpd size.

Thank you for your quick response and insight in this and so many other topics in the forum. I've learned a lot, and I really, really appreciate the amount of time and care you spend here!

Cheers

G

H

HKabaker

Inspiring

Hi,

You say,
The writer is doing a lot of structural work like adding/deleting/renaming/moving files and folders,

Probably it goes without saying, but I'm a little compulsive about asking:

All this is done via RH project operations, not in Windows Explorer.

Right?

Harvey

GravensteinAuthor

Inspiring

Yes, that is correct.

A bit more data. I've just been playing around in a copy of the project and have seen it in action. I've added some topics to the project, and with each one, I've done a Save All and then checked the cpd file size. The size increment in the cpd is pretty consistent and depends on the template used to create the topic. At the low end, if I create a topic using "none" (the default template), the cpd grows by about 150 KB. At the larger end, if I create a topic using one of our templates with more content, the cpd grows by 500 KB. I can now see how it gets so big so fast! Making it stop...not so clear.

G

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