OWB: Recent baseline added causing hanging issues / Error: "An exception occurred"

Products

• Clarity PPM SaaS
• Clarity PPM On Premise

Issue/Introduction

While a project is opening in Clarity Open Workbench (OWB), it is hanging / taking a long time to open and showing that it is exporting all of the baselines even if the setting is checked in Clarity to only export the current baseline. Once the project is open, the Manage Baseline page may only show one baseline, so you are not sure if the performance issue is due to pulling all of the baselines down into OWB.  This may be noticed on multiple projects.

When the project opens, if you try to make a small change (or no change), on the save back, it hangs.  You can see that some items are saved back since the last updated date for the tasks is updating in Clarity.

You may also see an error when saving: 'Unable to save project CA PPM\<project Id>. An exception occured. '

In the OWB Console log, you may see the below error at the bottom of the log when you attempt to save the project back (Especially if the save back crashes your OWB)

Java heap space
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space

Environment

Release : All Supported

Component : Clarity Open Workbench (OWB)

Cause

This is due to the size of the project being too large for the machine to save back which may start happening after a new baseline is created. While all baselines are exported on the initial open or save, they do not get completely pulled due to the setting in Clarity, so this is not causing the performance issue in this particular scenario.  An increase in tasks and assignments can cause the issue to happen, but one main thing to check is if there was any recent baseline done since the issue start happening. Even if you have the option checked in Clarity to only Export the current baseline, if the project is a large project, even one baseline can cause the project to have issues opening and saving including:

• Slow performance
• Out of memory
• Crashing
• Errors such as: 'Unable to save project CA PPM\<project Id>. An exception occured. '

The reason why a newer baseline can trigger the issue is due to the size of the project when the prior baseline was taken compared to when the new baseline was taken. If the project is larger at the time of the newer baseline, then this would increase the size of the baseline, and thus the size of the file being opened in OWB (since the current (new) baseline is included in the complete export)

Resolution

Increase Java Memory

• One thing that can help to allow the project to be saved back is by increasing the Maximum Java Memory usage for OWB using KB: OWB: Setting maximum java memory usage. If the project was previously crashing, this may allow it to now save back. However, you may continue to see the project takes longer to open and save, And, as the size of the project continues to increase, you may run into errors or other issues again, especially if you re-baseline, as a baseline is taking a snapshot of the entire project.

Break out the project into multiple projects/subprojects

• If the above does not help, it's recommended to then consider breaking out the project into multiple projects / subprojects. 

Test using a prior baseline

• Another thing you could do as a test to see if a recent baseline is the cause, is switching your current baseline to a previous baseline (prior to when the issue happened). If yes, if possible, you could keep that as the current baseline to allow the project to open without issue. Otherwise, you would want to consider breaking out the project into multiple projects to avoid performance issues.

Additional Information

If you are seeing more slowness in one environment versus another (Example: Test versus Prod) and the projects are the same size, this would indicate a possible environmental issue instead. 

If you are exporting more than one baseline to OWB, see also: OWB error "Unable to save project.... An exception occurred" when exporting multiple baselines