Activity Count

Is the activity count in P3 limited to 200 only? I am creating a project plan on P3 and it cannot add anymore activities, why so?



Hi Aleli,



200 is good for Level 1 or 2 program only. The other guys are talking of THOUSANDS activities. Refer to Number of Activities.

Gents



Please start a new topic



:-)



Good luck



Alex

Hi guys,



In the old days, 1994, you used to go into the database, and create an index, and this created the links between ID’s. The best explanation I can give was going to the library and looking for a book, on civil engineering.



They had all these cards in a drawer, and then you looked for drawer C, and found the card for civil engineering, here was a card, the referred to several sub-disciplines, and you found what you where looking for ie geotechnics, this referred you to another drawer with more cards, and you found the card, related to geotechnical, and then you find the subject collapsing sands, and it refers you to another drawer, where you finally find the book by A Brink (the author) where he refers to collapsing sands, and you have your answer. If you had known you where looking for A Brink in the first place, you would have found the book in less steps, by going to the authors index in the first place. This is the role indexes and filters play, ie the drawers are indexes. For some or other reason programmers decided in their attempts to make programs user friendly to remove the word index and call it a link.



Hope this explains part of the problem of RDBF’s



Regards



Philip

Hi Philip,



I cannot say by 100 % that Suretrak is not a database, because I don’t know the source-code. But there are a lot of things that give me the impression that it is not. The big advantage of a database is that it is a multiuser application. This can be achieved by locking single "lines" instead of the whole file. Suretrak is not a multiuser-software. The difference between worksheet and database is not the form of saving. Saving can be done in any kind of format (as long as I know the format). Suretrak was created after P3 for single user, limited amount of activities - and as I think - to use the advantage of a worksheet. A Worksheet-software normaly would write into a single file, but to stay in the same family why not read and write in the same format with many files for the related groups as P3 does? So, therefore I don’t think Suretrak is P3-Lite but an own software.



Regards

Hannes

Hi Mario,



I don’t believe you understand the concept of relational databases. What happened in the 90’s was the programmers, wrote programs such as Access and MSP, which had the appearence of that they were spreadsheets, but they called things by different names, like database files (DBF) became tables, and the various database files were saved under one name, ie 32-bit technology vs 16-bit techology, But essentialy things are still the same, but a different look. Take a look at EPM V5, and although you cannot see the way data is stored, it essentially still a relational database, but appears not to be. To try and explain relational databases here would be quite a task, but I will scan in some old manuals this weekend, and send them to whoever is interested, it is only a couple of pages, but will give you an idea, of the workings behind whatever software you are using.



Regards



Philip

Well how come, it save the files in the same format as P3?

Hi Hannes, both P3 and Suretrak has engines, and as such, programms disk resident and not RAM. Suretrak looks like a spreadsheet, but has the same database configured files as P3. This is in fact true for almost all planning programmes.



Regards,



Philip

P3 is a database-programm i.e. limitation does not depend on memory installed. Each activity is loaded into the memory at the moment it is used and saved to the hard disk as soon as another activity is selected. Therefore recalculation takes a lot more time than a worksheet recalculation, P3 is slower in a network and no "File Save" is needed, etc.

Limitation therefore is by a) Harddisk b) recalculation time c) limited ID



Suretrack however works like a Worksheet and not like a database. So - limitation by memory, faster recalculation and "File Save"



Hannes de Bruyne

Gents



the only down turn is, it take a very long ....... time to schedule "F9" thats why they only schedule to "schedule F9" the schedule @ nigth.



Cheers



ALex

Philip



I actually saw a company uses over 1million activities in a structured P3 schedule and updated weekly.



You have to see it to believe it. It was in a housing development industry (Building New House)



Alex

Hi guys,



Having spoken with several people, both from Primavera, and other experienced planners, I was trying to find the limitations for P3, and the answers varied. The official number of activities is 100 000, however, apparently after 60 000, the program loses stability. The most I have handled was 35 000. This is purely an academic question, as we are migrating to V5. How many activities have anybody managed in P3 successfully?



Prior to primavera, I had used OP dos V4, and it had certain limitations, such as 15 000, on the normal version, but could be extended to something like 60 000 using an extended scheduler, and by changing to a unix version at the time, you could go to something like 200 000. This probably sounds like I was Noah’s planner, but it would be worthwile to know:-)



I have heard talk of 1,3 million activities, on a certain job at present. But find this a bit hard to believe.



Regards



Philip

Yes, you most assuredly have a Student Version of P3. This is sold at a discount only to students and is intended only for education, not actual business use.

I think that there is a "student" version with an activity count limitation.