Tips for Getting the Most (Speed) Out of Your Axys System

If you are your firm’s Axys expert, you’ve undoubtedly written scripts and macros to automate many processes on Axys. You put your scripts on the Axys Script Menu, and everything works perfectly. Then your firm grows…your assets under management grow…and your number of .cli and .grp files grow.

As your number of clients and groups grow to the thousands and your daily transactions grow to the tens of thousands, you notice that your scripts, which used to run in minutes on your workstation, now take an hour (or hours) to run. You start some scripts just as you leave at night and let them run into the wee hours of the morning because you don’t want to tie up your workstation during the day. If this scenario sounds at all familiar, then read on. This article contains some tips that will help you configure things in such a way as to get maximum speed out of your Axys system.

First and foremost, you should configure your Axys system so that the most time-intensive processes will run on the server.

You ask: What does this mean? How do I do it? Why will this help?

Recall that when you installed Axys, you installed the application itself on a network drive (the p: drive, for example), and then you performed a workstation install on each user’s workstation. The Axys application (and all the .cli and .grp files) reside on the server, a machine which is located in the “server room,” or perhaps even in a completely different location.

In order to run Axys processes on the server, you must log on to the server machine (just like you would log on to your own workstation) and perform an Axys workstation install. Performing the workstation install establishes the necessary registry entries on the server. Now that you’ve performed the workstation install on the server machine itself, now what?

The next time you need to run a time-intensive script or report, go to the server. and run the script (or report). You will notice immediate benefit. times faster on the server than it will on your workstation. the memory and processing speed of the server machine. Log on to the server machine, start Axys, Your time-intensive process will run two, three, four I’ve seen anywhere from two to ten times faster, depending on the memory and processing speed of the server machine.

If your LAN Administrator has heart palpitations at the thought of you walking over and logging on to the server, consider utilizing a scheduler such as NT Scheduler or Autosys. The server’s scheduler can be set so that it will run Axys processes in an unattended, completely secure mode. You can use a scheduler to run Axys processes at specified times or to run Axys processes under given conditions. You might, for example, run a script on your workstation which simply sets a flag on the server – a flag which tells the scheduler to start Axys on the server and run a process.

Here are some suggestions of processes you can run using “Axys on the Server.”

1. The server starts Axys and automatically builds several groups based on custom labels and other specified criteria

2. The server watches for flags indicating the existence of the daily interface files

3. The server starts Axys and post the interface transactions, positions, and prices

4. The server runs the Axys reconciliation report

5. The server posts “reconcilation” flags to the .cli files indicating whether or not the file is reconciled.

6. The server connects to IDC and retrieves missing prices

7. The server runs a series of Axys daily exception reports and comparison reports

8. The server runs Axys monthly management reports

9. The server runs Axys quarterly report packages, extracting data and assembling quarterly client reports.

The above examples are “real life” examples which are in use and in production today at various customer locations. This list is by no means complete, but is meant to give you some ideas. Step #1 is to begin by simply logging on to the server and running processes on the server machine itself. Step #2 is to develop a plan to utilize a scheduler to run your Axys processes on the server.

Good luck, and may the force be with you.