AFP Overlays and very slow printing
Dan Williams
We are on an E170 AS400 that we just recently put V5R1 on to.
We have had a pile of different problems since we have installed V5R1, but
the following in particular is the one concerned with the most.
Here's the Problem:
We Use Client Access Express, all PC's are NT 4.0 SP6a all CA Express is
current V5R1M0 S101907
We use a signature capture pad (Welch Allyn TT1500) and, and software
interface program, that makes the Pad, and the Business system work
together.
What happens is, when we are in the Sales Order program, and do the function
that causes the close and posting of an invoice, a little window comes up
(sig capture software that comes with the pad) prompting the client to sign
the pad. Once they have signed, we click "accept" and the OVL is supposed to
go to the "I" drive on the 400, and come out on the invoice.
This was not successful every time. After a pile of trouble shooting, it was
determined that, after we click accept, a little printer icon shows up in
the bottom right hand corner of the task bar near the time. The sales order
screen waits until "accept" has been clicked (this the closes the (sig
capture software that comes with the pad) and the Sales order screen tells
us to hit enter. This completes the invoice.
It was determined, that if we wait until the printer icon comes, and then
goes, and then we hit enter, the signature gets there everytime.
We have an AFP3112 driver set up for this (that is what we were told to do).
The reply from our support people:
***************************
The signature pad issue was related to the speed of your AS/400 and we have
sent a change to the program to wait till the signature file has been
created as an overlay on the AS/400 prior to printing the invoice.
**************************
Has any one else used, this type of configuration, or had similar problems?
I can not believe that all of this is related to the "speed of our as400"
Thanks,
Dan
Drew Dekreon
on the advanced tab turn on "Print directly to printer"
I suspect the Windows spooler/queu is causing your problem.
"Dan Williams" <NOSP...@willcraft.com> wrote in message
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Dan Williams
When we have these systems set up for this, we are to go into control panel,
right click on the printer, select "document defaults" and assure it is set
to "overlay" The 400 dos something with the process, that then sends the job
to the proper system printer, P1 etc.
Dan
"Drew Dekreon" <drew_dekreon@chugachelectric.!com!> wrote in message
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Rodney Johnson
numerous steps in order for that overlay to be attached to your invoice.
Once the signature is captured by your PC, it has to get that signature into a
form that is a valid data stream for an overlay object on the iSeries
(AS/400). Once it is the proper format, it has to be moved to the iSeries and
an overlay object be created. Once that overlay object is created it now can
be attached to a spooled file through the printer file. The printer file is
opened when you request your invoice to be built. When all the data is written
and the printer file is closed, a spooled file exists ready for printing. At
printing time, the spooled file is merged with the overlay per the
configuration of the printer file.
If you request your invoice to be printed before the signature to overlay
process can be completed, the printer writer on the iSeries will not have an
overlay to merge with your invoice.
If the only thing that has changed in your environment is a move from a
previous release to V5R1 on the iSeries (meaning nothing else has changed
including your PCs), then it is likely that V5R1 has additional function/code
path taking up more CPU cycles than prior releases. Since the code path you
are using is not likely to be enhanced, it may be that your iSeries could use
more memory (other jobs on your iSeries could be hogging main memory) forcing
more paging in the overlay creation path.
I've seen numerous posting regarding performance and many situations were
attributed to not having enough memory when upgrading.
FWiW, hope this at least helps you understand what is going on and perhaps will
help you figure out where you need to focus when addressing the performance
issues.
Dan Williams wrote:
--
Rodney A Johnson
Technical Team Lead for AS/400 Spool
Dept GJC
IBM Rochester, Minnesota
The contents of this message express only the sender's opinion.
This message does not necessarily reflect the policy or views of
my employer, IBM. All responsibility for the statements
made in this Usenet posting resides solely and completely with the
sender.
Dan Williams
We are at 192MB, we have ordered an upgrade that is to take us to 832MB I
believe (the max for our unit)
We were completely satisfied prior to the upgrade to 5.1 (performance etc)
We will see if the RAM gets us back on track.
Thanks.
Dan
"Rodney Johnson" <rjoh...@rchland.ibm.com> wrote in message
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Dan Williams
Well we have been through a lot trying to find the solution.
We did up the ram in the 400 to 832MB (the max for our box) And noticed no
noteable impovement.
However, we have been told to use an AFP 3112 driver.
We have found that through testing, immediately after clicking accept on the
signature pad, that the overlay, and the bitmap get to the as 400 instantly,
however in the system tray, the printer icon stays for a long time. We have
also found, if we wait until that icon has disappeared, then hit enter to
finishe the invoice, that it is successfull every time. This is all done on
nt4.0.
We set this up as well on an Win 98 box, and found that the try icon never
does show up, however it prints the signature everytime.
The difference is the afp driver.. nt VS Win95.
Do you know anything about these drivers, is there somewhere to get updated
ones, or how do the vendor decide to use an IBM AFP3112 instead of something
else?
Thanks if you can help.
Dan
"Rodney Johnson" <rjoh...@rchland.ibm.com> wrote in message
news:3C4D799C...@rchland.ibm.com...
Rodney Johnson
cheap. It is interesting that the W98 path works better. Our resident CA
print expert says that something is holding up the creation of the overlay
process. One thing that I think needs to be clear is what do you mean by the
overlay appears on the as400 instantly. Do you mean the image appears on the I
driver instantly, or the actual overlay object is created and placed in some
library on the as400 instantly?
The as400 cannot currently handle an "overlay" as an IFS file. Overlays are an
object type on the as400 and can only be included with the spooled file through
a printer file. Our resident CA print expert thinks that the fact that the
printer icon stays visable for so long, is because something is slowing down
the process to create the overlay object. This is assuming that the creation
of the overlay object is what is going on when you see the printer icon.
I would suggest contacting your IBM service representative to deal with this
performance problem. Some tracing is probably going to be required for CA to
determine what is going on. Your application provider may or may not be able
to help out as well. They may have had other users of their app encounter this
delay and may know what the solution was (if there was one).
Dan Williams
We have done some timing tests and find tht from the time that we
click accept on the signature, to the time it prints, is 27 seconds.
This is on a 40PPM Laser. When we do the same process without the
signature, it prints pretty much instant.
I agree something is holding up the process, the vendor even indicated
they had written a routine that tells the program to look and see if
the OVL is there yet.. When we have window up that shows the
"I"Drive, ,and clicj refresh, immedialetly after clicking accept, we
can see the .bmp, and the .ovl file are now created on the "I"Drive
about 2 - 4 kb each, very small file. Out of the 2700 signatures, they
are all around that size.
On the AFP 3112 printer, we set teh document defaults to "overlay"
When the tray icon is there, on the local PC, is this indicating to
us, that it has not created the file on the 400 yet?
Because this vendor only has 2 dealers on the pads, it really is not
getting any priority, and I do believe it is caused by some poor
design of getting the overlay to the invoice. But, if there are no
other ways around it, we are just going to have to live with it.
As a note, even on the vendors 400 which they clearly point out to us
, over and over is bigger an newer than ours, it takes 20 seconds.
Dan
Rodney Johnson
overlay object gets created. You could correlate the creation audit entry for the
overlay with the steps you need to do to print out the invoice with a signature.
This should allow you to determine when the tray icon is showing if the overlay is
being created.
You may want to get the latest version of the AFP printer driver for NT. There
were numerous bugs introduced when color support was added. None of the fixes had
to do with performance (that our resident CA expert is aware of), but maybe it will
help.
Again, you can contact your IBM service representative to have this investigated.
Paul Tykodi
Here is some information that might help you to quantify the amount of
time required for each step in the process that you have outlined in
your posting.
As I understand your description of your environment, the following
steps occur each time that a customer uses the signature pad.
1. Customer writes their signature on the signature pad.
2. An application resident on a Win NT 4.0 sp6a PC with a direct
connection to the pad receives the signature data in an electronic
format from the pad. The application opens a dialog box on the PC's
screen that says Accept. The sales person at this purchasing kiosk
presses the Accept radio button in the dialog box and the signature
capture application passes the electronic signature data through the
IBM 3112 AFP print driver. The resulting Overlay source file produced
by the IBM Windows print driver is transferred to a shared folder on
the IFS resident in your AS/400. There is a noticeable time difference
in the completion of this process when working on a Win NT PC versus a
Win 98 PC.
Hint #1 - The IFS typically runs Win NT or Win 2K. These operating
systems are very permission forgiving (i.e. really don't perform very
much Windows security checking) when the client attaching to them for
a file share transfer is from the Win95/98/ME branch of Microsoft
operating systems.
Win NT and Win 2K are much less permission forgiving when the
originating client for a file share transfer is running Win NT or Win
2K as well. The receiving computer (IFS) will perform a much more
intensive Windows security analysis of the originating client. There
is some good information on the IBM web site about running the OS/400
NetServer service and the method for managing User ID's and Passwords
that will have access to the IFS file which might shed some more light
on this part of the process.
The printer icon in the systray appearing and remaining on screen for
some seconds at the Win NT PC end of the transfer is telling you that
the file transfer might be having some difficulty. In order to see
whether any messages are being displayed on the Win NT PC, you can
double click on the IBM AFP 3112 printer driver in the printers folder
on one of the PC's. When you press the Accept radio button on the
screen capture dialog box, you should see a spool file zoom through
the spool window that you have opened. If some problems are
encountered, you may see an error message displayed momentarily in the
spool window. You can also check the event viewer log for a sample Win
NT PC as well to see whether any errors are being logged regarding the
file transfer.
3. The signature data has been successfully passed from the Win NT PC
to the IFS. It is stored in an OVL (Overlay Source) file format. A new
process copies the Overlay source data from the IFS file to a source
physical file that has been created under OS/400 V5R1. The OS/400
CRTOVL command is run against this source file to create the signature
in an OS/400 recognized Overlay object file format. This format can be
used for printing.
4. The signature overlay is blended with the printable data when the
Enter key is pressed at the purchasing kiosk and the spool file with
signature overlay included is sent to the printer.
Hint #2 - The signature data source will be created by the AFP 3112
Windows print driver using the compressed image (IOCA) IPDS tower. The
management of compressed image data within a spool file can change
across OS/400 release levels. You should perform some tests where you
create a spool file from the Win NT PC that enters the OS/400 spool
queue on hold. You can then release the file and see how long the
AS/400 based transformation and delivery of the spool file with the
attached Overlay is taking. The time will vary depending upon whether
you are printing to an IPDS printer or using Host Print Transform to
convert an *AFPDS spool file to HP PCL. One of the reasons that your
application vendor may have specified the AFP 3112 driver is that it
fixes the resolution of the signature to 300 DPI. There are AFP IPDS
Printer drivers which are capable of creating 144, 240, 300, 600, and
1200 DPI Overlay source files. The application vendor may have chosen
a specific driver to insure that they receive Overlay source at the
correct resolution for their application.
If printing to an IPDS capable printer, it would be most efficient to
have the application printer file specify a device type of *AFPDS, as
opposed to *SCS or *IPDS, because it will make the OS/400
transformation time from spool file input to printer ready output as
short as possible.
Hint #3 - Given the business process you are performing to move the
signature data from the pad to the AS/400 for printing, it is quite
likely that for the near term future, using your current hardware, it
will never become an instantaneous process where you press Accept and
the invoice arrives on the printer. You probably have some room to
reduce the time from 27 seconds to some lower optimum value but I
don't think people should assume that it will necessarily become a 2
or 3 second process either.
Good luck!
Best Regards,
/Paul
--
Paul Tykodi
National Product Manager
LCI Intermate US Inc.
E-mail: pa...@intermate-us.com
On Mon, 04 Mar 2002 08:59:32 -0600, Rodney Johnson
Dan Williams
That is excellent information, I will give this a study/ experiment, and see
what happens.
Thank You very much!
Dan
"Paul Tykodi" <pa...@intermate-us.com> wrote in message
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