Does a Loop for records in CSV file have a maximum?

[TylerMitton]

I have a few CSV files with 25,000+ records in them... they all sit in one folder.

My task does the following:

Start Loop "Each File in... (folder)"

Read From CSV file: ...
Start Loop " Each row in a CSV/Text file..."

Some commands...

End Loop

End Loop

For each csv file, it seems to get to 15,000 records ok, but not to 19,000. It just stops the loop somewhere between 15,000 and 19,000 rows and doesn't give a warning or anything... it just moves on to the next file in the folder. Then it exits the next file somewhere between 15,000 and 19,000 rows.

Testing for this is a pain because it takes several minutes to go through just 15,000 records in a CSV file.

So I've got two questions:

1. How can I loop through a file with an unlimited amount of rows?
2. How can I speed up the looping for rows in a CSV file?

Thank you!

Tyler

[forumsupport]

Hello,

Regarding your queries,

. Yes, you can certainly loop through a file with an unlimited amount of rows.
. 'Loop for each row in a CSV file' command is the fastest way. Can you please try using variable for session name? For e.g. use $Filename$ as session name.

In addition, is it possible for you to upload sample CSV file so we can try reproducing the scenario at our end?

It would help us investigate further.

[TylerMitton]

Thank you, here is a link to the csv file I'm using:

http://www.iso-ne.com/histRpts/da-lm...a_20100307.csv

Note that I cannot open this file in excel as I do not have it.

[forumsupport]

Hello,

We tried to reproduce the exact scenario at our end but it did not reproduce. We are able to loop through entire CSV file of 24384 records.

Can you please send your task so we can have a look? Also, try running the same task with beta version of Automation Anywhere 6.0 and let us know if you still face the similar issue.

Hope that helps.

[TylerMitton]

I just want to point out here that this has not been resolved. They are looking into it.

I'll post here if/when we figure out a fix or workaround.

[TylerMitton]

This issue has been confirmed as a bug with AA 5.5 and no work around was ever found within AA 5.5.

The fix I was given was to run a beta version of AA 6.0. I have done some preliminary testing and AA 6.0 Beta R4 seems to be working without problems. Using AA 6.0 Beta R4 allows me to run this task without problems.

If anyone else has this issue, you'll have to try to get them to give you a license to allow you to use AA 6 in order to fix your problem. Please be careful though, because any task opened in AA 6 cannot be opened in 5.5 anymore... so backup all of your tasks first.

I upgraded to AA 5.5 Premier from Standard just over 30 days ago and now all of my looping tasks are failing including my legacy Tasks. Not only are they failing AA 5.5 shuts down and removes itself from memory, if I'm lucky. I have had a couple of Run-time errors that indicate a stack overflow. When I check Task Manager usually the only residuals are the AAEventMonitor, AAHotKeys and several WPA.EXE file. On a bad day after several restarts I have several copies of the AA App, AAServices and several dozen copies of WPA.exe.

The Task is not rocket science just a bunch of repetative commands. I loop through and a series of accounts using an Excel file as the control. During the execution of the Task I download a list of Payments from an Extranet site and then loop through this list to extract the invoice detail of the individual payments. Before AA 5.5 Prem I could loop though 50+ accounts , download all the information I needed without problem. Thypically this was several throusand transactions. Now I can't make it through one account with 208 records. AA 5.5. Prem seems to die around 60+ times round thel oop.

I have sent the Task to support and received it back with a couple of added Delays and changed a few Mouse Clicks, I guess to support their browser config. They claimed it ran no problem.

There is no way the changes they made had any effect on the task, if for no reason orthen than the places they made changes were not being executed when the application died.

It has to be a bug because there is no way a tool like this should stop and remove itself from memory unless there was a problem with the code!

So far I have lost close to a month trying to get this baby to work. If AA 6.0 fixes the problem, I agree they should provide a copy or refund the cost of the upgrade to AA 5.5 and let me revert back to the Standard Edition which given the way I've been forced to code these tasks without any of the Premier features.

They also suggested AA 6.0 Beta but there was a limit on the number of times through a loop it would perform so I abandoned the effort.

I've been a Tethys customer for a long time, starting with an early version of WorkSpace Macro. I have always been happy with the upgrades and the support but this time I feel both have let me down.

Please update your post if you get a resolution on these issues.

Best,

Stuart White

[TylerMitton]

Hi Stuart, this is likely not going to help... but I would suggest checking out the size of your temp folder and deleting its contents... the folder I'm referring to is here:

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Temp

I had some major issues where tasks were starting and stopping immediately because that folder was somehow full... though I still had space on my hard drive. As that folder gets fuller and fuller it seems to impact the performance of the machine as well... so I created a task that deletes file from that folder that are more than a couple hours old... it runs once a day. Performance of AA has been better since I started doing that.

Here's a thread on my issue:

All of my exe tasks stopped running!!!!

It looks to me like its a bug with AA where it doesn't clean up after itself in the temp folder.

Let me know if that helps.

Tyler

[forumsupport]

Hello Stuart,

We looked into your task. This issue is not a bug. The task is dealing with creating multiple CSV files in loop so insufficient delay can cause this problem hence the support team added delays at required places. Also, they replaced mouse clicks with MWC or Web Recorder command at some places to ensure the reliability of task. We ran the task and it executed successfully without any error.

One additional option that we suggest in such case is, make use of variable in session name while reading the CSV file in loop for e.g. you can use $Counter$ system variable in session name field. That would further eliminate the possibility of error.

Hope that helps.

[forumsupport]

Hello Stuart,

If you are using nested loop then $Counter$ value will repeat hence may not work as expected so we need to create manual counter in such scenario.

Regarding Automation Anywhere crashing while running the task, can you please upload the task in question so we can look into it and suggest viable solution?

Can you please provide your number and best time to reach at
Automation Anywhere - Open A Support Case so we can talk about upgrade?

Alternatively, you can reach us at 1-888-484-3535 x 3.