Sage 100

Sage 100 Advanced 4.5.2 - Activity Log never displays - I selected the report from LM last night and walked away for an hour and nothing displayed, nor did I get any errors. The Sy_Activity file has 961k records, 135 mb and is not split. Looked around for a rebuild but nothing is available, that I found for this file. Any ideas?

That's too large. You need to rename the activity log file when everyone's out and let it create a new one.

Thanks @DawnAnastasi I'll do that. What can be done to keep some of the old log details? Is it exportable?

Since there is a Crystal report (though probably a work file) you should be able to do an Excel query to export it.

Did you try running it on the actual server. it usually will usually come up. (definitely faster than from the workstation) You can print it to a PDF ./ or to a flat file.

AND a crystal report will whip the info out a whole lot faster.

@JimWoodhead - yes it was at the server that I ran it, but since nothing displays, I never have a chance to send to pdf or anything else. I'm going to see if I can get to it via ODBC.

In case it's pertinent there's a Sy_RebuildSystem.m4p that you can run via pvxwin32.exe but requires everyone to be out of system and I'm not sure if list of Rebuildable files it displays includes this one. Second option is RUN ""*UFAR"" via pvxwin32.exe and point it to the file with everyone out of the system. The thinking here is being able to salvage some of the activity log in case ODBC doesn't work out.

The OLD *ufar program!!! Boy that have been around for a while..

Wow, that is old, ufar! Thanks for the idea @AlnoorCassim - but I ended up using crystal to create a report from sy_activity, adjusted a few field widths and exported to pdf. Then renamed the sy_activity.m4t to sy_activity.old_07192012. What is amazing, or short sighted on Sage's part, is the log built up to nearly a million records in only a little more than 4 months! I've had to do a lot of data imports, renumber/merge/deletes and then there is all the regular activity. It would have been great if Sage could have provided an archive capabiltiy for the actitivy log or at least a means of purging only the non-error activity like user logins and VI jobs. This file grows too fast now that it logs ever successful login to mas and nearly every other event too!

Very glad Crystal (ODBC) worked out for you. That was my 1st preference too. The story behind it is it first start getting bloated up in version 4.0x where everything was getting written to the log. I must've had 20 cases of this to deal with. Also the way they designed it was a listbox that gets every single record loaded in there before you can see anything. If you were just able to hit Print to interrupt it while loading to bring up Activity Log Report, you could preview it much faster that way. Then in 4.10+ they reduced some of the repetitive places where log got written to and this problem wasn't as prevalent. But then when PCI / PA-DSS updates came out for 4.3 and 4.4, since then many more events got written again for compliance reasons and old problem happening again but not as bad I think. You're right that in there's never been any design changes to the Activity Log in terms of archiving or purging or even searching (try doing text searches on the Description field). I always have to dump it to Crystal and search.There's a probably an enhancement request already on the V1 site.

Thank you for the explantion @AlnoorCassim - the Acitivyt Log used to be a wonderful resource especially when tracking down events the users swear they never did, but had to have been executed by someone. I'm just going to have to setup a quarterly routine to monitor, dump to a file when the activity log bloats. In case the V1 site doesn't have a request, I'll put it out on the Sage Users/Resellers linked in site - I know that seems to be monitored better.

https://www11.v1ideas.com/SageERP/mas90and200/Idea/Detail/2075 Here's an enhancement request we can all vote for.

Sorry but the request is ONLY a year old. It hasn't aged like a fine French cheese to be ready for prime time.....................

I was sitting here laughing when I posted that link wondering how long it was going to take for you to respond!! It was only 1 minute!!

Ooh, gettting a reputation. Guess I'll have to go dark for an extended period of time................. Doesn't everyone keep a SC panel open while they are working on the crossword puzzle waiting for the 5 PM bell to ring??? Yabba Dabba Doooooo...

Well, @JeffSchwenk, I think the reason for the request being over a year old isn't related to cheese. More like foie gras since Sage NA is located in California, where foie gras is now banned.

I just know how much you think of the enhancement request process so I made that suggestion just for you!

I LIKE the enhancement process. It is an easy way to make suggestions. I HATE how Sage (doesn't) take it from there. Remove revolver from holster. Ready, aim, fire into your foot.