Slow app startup

16.3 starts up quickly, however the 17.0 beta gets stuck at this step for 90 sec.

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Does this happen every time you start the beta, or did it happen only once?

Happens consistently, whether on or off VPN and using two different internet providers.

I can't reproduce this. For me, the beta starts up quickly.

Is there a file called online_resources.xml in your user files folder? (for both 16.3 and 17.0).

If it's missing from 17.0, does copying the file (with Toad not running, of course) from 16.3 help?

online_resources.xml is identical in both 16.3 and 17.0 user files. When launching 16.3, the progress bar doesn't even pause at "Download resource settings", launching in well under 10 seconds.

Did it start with this beta, or was it happening ever since we started with 17.0?

I noticed it first with the previous beta.

Try this:

  1. Start Toad (no need to make a connection but OK if one auto-connects)
  2. go to Options -> General
  3. Check "Enable Logging" on the right. "One time only" will auto-check. Leave it checked. Also check "Enable freeze detection".
  4. Click OK and Toad will prompt for a restart. Click Yes.
  5. When Toad restarts, if you get an "application appears to be frozen" message, just click OK to it. You may get one of those every 15 seconds, just click OK to them to see if you can get through the 90 seconds.
  6. After Toad starts up, just close it again and logging will disable itself.
  7. There is now a "Logs" folder in the folder above "User Files".

Please zip up and email me that folder. john.dorlon@quest.com.

If logging won't auto-disable because of the freeze error, you can edit Toad.ini, and delete all of these lines under [SETTINGS]

OneTimeFreezeCheck=1
OneTimeDebug=1
DEBUG=1
SCRIPTDEBUG=1

I am seeing slower startup behavior, too.

Beta 17.0.56.711 takes ~1:09 to start. Most (1:04) was in splash screen with "Downloading Resource Settings..." displayed.

Not really freezing, has never been a speedy startup, but slower by a small but noticeable proportion in 17 beta.

I have a 250/10 MBs up/down DOCSIS 3.0 cable connection with the company VPN on top of that. Latency is a problem. Oracle 12 exports are about 5x slower. I suspect it's latency accumulating delays in all the handshaking with the server. If TOAD is having a lot of conversation with the Quest servers during startup, that might also be my latency.

Sending logs as instructed above via email. By the way, I found the logs here:

C:\Users\[my domain username]\AppData\Roaming\Quest Software\Toad for Oracle\17.0 beta\Logs

I don't know why it's slowed down for you and Doug, only that the slowness seems to come from when we are trying to pull this file (which rarely changes)

https://community-downloads.quest.com/toadsoft/ORACLE/VERSION/online_resources.xml

You can prevent Toad from trying to download it by adding this line to Toad.ini, under [SETTINGS]

InternetAccess=0

-John

Sorry for the barrage of questions in response to this but:
DDL Export or Export Dataset? Or creation of .dmp files with Oracle's EXPORT utility?
Slower than other Oracle versions?
Slower than the same action in Toad 16.3?
Something else?

DDL Export runs a lot of SQL. Data Export usually runs only 1 SQL but with a lot of rows returned. Either way, Toad is kind of out of the loop on network speed here. We just pass the query to Oracle and wait for an answer

Export Dataset
No experience with other Oracle Versions, 12.1 Client on Oracle instance running Siebel
Slightly slower than 16.3, but on cusp of being perceptible (could be wrong)

Oracle exports vary with complexity and size of query and size of source tables involved in the joins. Some queries return much faster than others. Exports from TOAD instance on VM (same version, same queries on machine inside corporate fiber network) are significantly faster than running through VPN from remote office, somewhere between 3-5x roughly.

Back to the hanging at the splash screen during launch...

Even if the file online_resources.xml exists, Toad appears to be trying to download it. I discovered that Toad does not hang when Forcepoint AV (blackspider proxy server) is disabled. However, accessing https://community-downloads.quest.com/toadsoft/ORACLE/VERSION/online_resources.xml from Chrome with Forcepoint enabled returns the XML immediately, so not sure what Toad is doing differently.

Doug

Hi Doug,

That's good info about Forcepoint AV. Is there a way to whitelist community-downloads.quest.com in that app? I'd be interested to know if @lob_36979 is using anything like that.

Toad is doing an http GET on that file. I don't know if/how that differs from Chrome.

When we started the 17.0 beta cycle, we updated to the latest Delphi (our development environment) version and also the latest IPWorks (3rd party network utilities components) version. Then about 2 weeks after that, another IPWorks version came out. So we will update to that soon. I don't know if it will fix the problem or not. If it does not, we can also try downgrading back to the our prior version of IPWorks, but I hope it doesn't come to that

-John

My workstation runs Forcepoint, but it's completely locked down by corporate IT (all options are grayed and can't change registry settings). I cannot suspend it, even for testing.

Same here, but at least our IT Security team wants their endpoint tools to be inobtrusive, so will work with us to fix issues such as this.

~WRD000.jpeg

Forcepoint in our instance is remarkably unobtrusive. I wasn't aware of its function until certain URLs stopped working briefly a few years ago and they pushed a patch or settings change. It seems to be watching everything. ("Hiya there, Forcepoint overlords!")

The delay is not significant enough for me to find the right IT expert—no small task—and experiment. They might tell me that, anyway, if it comes down to maintaining a one-off image exception or change a setting affecting literally thousands of desktops.

Hi @DougK and @lob_36979

For the next beta, I have added some detailed logging to our HTTP access component. I am working with the provider of this component to try to solve your slow startup problem.

When it becomes available, please do the following:

  1. Shut down Toad.
  2. Remove the "InternetAccess=0" line from Toad.ini
  3. Start Toad (no need to make a connection but OK if one auto-connects)
  4. go to Options -> General
  5. Check "Enable Logging" on the right. "One time only" will auto-check. Leave it checked. Do not check "Enable freeze detection"
  6. Click OK and Toad will prompt for a restart. Click Yes.
  7. After Toad starts up, just close it again and logging will disable itself.
  8. There is now a "Logs" folder in the folder above "User Files".

If you are curious - the folder will contain a new file called HTTPDebug.log. This is what I am after.

Please zip up and email me that folder. john.dorlon@quest.com.

Thanks.

Looking forward to it!

BTW, you asked about explicitly configuring a proxy server in the application and can tell you that no other app needs it. Forcepoint intercepts http/https calls without any additional configuration.

Thanks,

Doug

~WRD000.jpeg

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This is caused by a bug in the latest version of our internet access provider components.

It happens when, in your system settings, wherever the proxy server is defined, it is defined as "servername:port" instead of "https://servername:port". In that case, our internet access component is defaulting to a SOCKS5 protocol instead of HTTPS tunneling.

We are working on a solution.