Links hierarchy structure plugin hangs the browser when trying to display issues with lots of links

Nancy Belser November 18, 2012

I have an issue that is linked to 129 other issues. When I try to display the Links Hierarchy tab, it shows only some of the issue and they are smashed up on top of each other. In addition, the flash player hangs and then crashes.

I am using v 1.1.1

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Kinto Soft
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January 12, 2013

but in order to see all issues, the display was so tiny it was unreadable (Nov, 26th 2012)

Please, follow this thread

https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/123661/when-there-are-more-than-10-links-the-font-is-too-small-to-read


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Kinto Soft
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November 30, 2012

Hi Nacy, sorry for the delay in answering.

It took about 75 seconds to display all links.

Definetively this is an unacceptable response time. I'll improve it by replacing the JIRA REST API by a custom method getting all the issues from the server at once to avoid one call from the client per issue ~ 200 calls. And probably other improvements: to avoid the browser hangs, I replaced the way how the tree was built using Flash Player interruptions and getting an issue from the server for each frame refresh. Usually, Flash Player renders 20 frames per second -> 20 nodes added to the tree per second -> ~200 nodes would take 20 seconds!

I also noticed a feature that the old plugin provided: it allowed you to choose what link type you wanted to display. For example, I am mainly interested in 'depends on/blocks' links.

This has a lot of sense for one depth level trees. For trees with an arbitrary depth... has it sense? For example, if you have the following linked sequence of issues: A->B->C->D->E and all link types are "relates to" execpt the middle "C->D" which is "blocks"... and the user selects "blocks" then what it would mean? Only "A" without children should be displayed because B is "related to" A or the sequence A->B->C->D because there is a "block" in the chain?

I noticed that the "Inward" and "Outward" buttons don't seem to work when I turn them off and then back on again. The screen is blank when I turn outward "off" and then stays blank when I turn it back "on".

It seems a bug or maybe a configuration of the Flash Player in your browser. The on|off values are stored by using "Flash cookies" (SharedObjects). By default, browsers allows users to store up to 100kb without permission, unless your administrator blocked that functionality.

(Continues)

Kinto Soft
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November 30, 2012

I noticed that your plugin handles scrolling differently than the other issue tabs...

I'll try to identify when the plugin is rendered within the "Activity" tab, then reduce the high to left visible the action bar only. If an user wants to see the hiearhy tree structure, then the "full screen" button should be clicked. There is not an easy way to integrate a Flash Player based app with the "see more..." feature :-(

I can send you a screen shot of how the old Atlassian plugin looks. Should I send it to your support email address?

Yes, please send visual feedback as much as possible!. Thank you!

Kinto Soft
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December 2, 2012

Nacy, please download the 1.1.5 version. It should resolve all the performance problems. Now, issues are retrieved from the server at once and rendered 15x faster by the plug-in.

Pending issues:

  • Improve "Activity" tab integration
  • Large graphs unreadable when a lot of issues are displayed at a glance (too tiny).
  • Switching inward/outward buttons stop working as expected.

Thank you!

Nancy Belser December 10, 2012

Thanks, Pablo. I tried out 1.2.0 and it is still quite slow. It took almost 6 minutes before it crashed Shockwave Flash. It took about 30 seconds to retrieve issues from server, the rest on display.

When I turned off Inward, it was much faster. Perhaps Inward should default to off? I suggest this because users don't have a chance to turn it off before it displays.

Still need a better way to view large graphs.

It would be nice if we could specify the type of links we are interested in.

Kinto Soft
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December 11, 2012

Please, try the new 1.2.1 verision just released. It supports a new filter: depth. Moreover, if any issue is not fully loaded, then a funnel icon is displayed at the right to indicate that there are links not displayed.

It took about 30 seconds to retrieve issues from server

The 1.2.0 version retieves the full hierarchy from the server at once, so it means the graph is really huge because this process was really optimized: one call to JAVA over a very high performance data transefer protocol (AMF) instead of many REST API calls. The 1.2.1 version, instead of the full hierarchy, only retrives the nodes which will be displayed reducing a lot the delay when some filters are applied on the hierarchy structure.

It took almost 6 minutes before it crashed Shockwave Flash

Likely, there are some limits to fully load huge graphs. The only way to get any useful graph is by applying filters :-(

Perhaps Inward should default to off?

Done.

Still need a better way to view large graphs

Pending.

It would be nice if we could specify the type of links we are interested in.

Some sort of filter for link types (and probaly issue types too) will be implemented in next releases.

Pablo.

Kinto Soft
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December 13, 2012

The new 1.2.3 version shows (among other few features) a node counter. It can help to measure the rendering speed.

On my laptop (i7, 8Gb RAM, Windows 8, IE 10, Flash 11.3) with JIRA 5.2 also installed locally, it tooks ~12 secs to display 1.200+ nodes (render speed is ~100 nodes/sec). Retrieveing issues from the server tooks ~1 sec).

The deepth filter is really usefull, in my case setting it to 10 provides almost all the useful information and it prunes the tree to ~120 nodes, hence the tree is fully displayed in less than 2 secs.

Nancy Belser December 18, 2012

Pablo, I have downloaded and tested v 1.2.5 and it seems to perform much better. Defaulting to inward off really helps us. I tested it on chrome, IE and firefox. It behaves slightly differently between each. With chrome, you can use the scroll wheel on your mouse to zoom in and out in both the normal and expanded view. With IE and firefox, the scroll wheel doesn't zoom in the normal view.

It would still be nice to be able to specify which link types to view. It would also be nice to be able to click on an issue in the hierarchy and and have that issue display.

Thanks for all your hard work on this; it seems like something we can use in our production instance.

Kinto Soft
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December 18, 2012

I have downloaded and tested v 1.2.5 and it seems to perform much better

Great!

With IE and firefox, the scroll wheel doesn't zoom in the normal view

Hold down the Ctrl key and drag up/down the graph in order to zoom in/out

It would still be nice to be able to specify which link types to view

I need to think a bit more about the impact on mult-level trees.

It would also be nice to be able to click on an issue in the hierarchy and and have that issue display.

This is implemented from the inital version, bot not in the standard way: Hold down the mouse on any issue an wait for a ~ 1 sec. A pop up context menu will be shown allowing to open the issue page.

Many thanks for the feedback!

Kinto Soft
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December 21, 2012

Hi Nancy,

The 1.3.0 version supports link type filters (and also for issue types).

I've added tooltips explaining the impact of filters, so it should be easy understand why some nodes/branches are pruned.

Some expand/collapse options have been added in the context menus (please, remember: click and hold down for a second).

Pablo.

PS: I'll update the documentaion soon.

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Nancy Belser November 25, 2012

Pablo,

This issue doesn't follow either pattern you mentioned. The parent issue links to issues that link to other issues. The depth is approximately 7 levels. We likely would not have a depth > 20.

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Kinto Soft
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November 19, 2012

Please, download the new 1.1.2 version. It resolves the problem.

Thank you very much!

Pablo.

Nancy Belser November 25, 2012

I installed the 1.1.3 version and it encountered a new problem. When I clicked on the Links Hierarchy tab, the screen started refreshing repeatedly and didn't seem like it was going to stop. I let it refreshed about 20 times before I gave up.

I will be glad to work with you to test this. I am working in my Jira 5.1.6 test environment, which contains an older version of our production data, so it is a good place to test. Just to let you know, my production environment is running Jira 4.4.3 with the old Links Hierarchy Reports plugin that Atlassian Labs used to support. I am able to pull up the same 128 link issue with that plugin very quickly.

Nancy Belser November 25, 2012

To further clarify, I tested this originally in Google Chrome browser version 23.0.1271.64 m and got the repeated refreshes.

I also tested it in Firefox 16.0.1. It did display in Firefox, but I cannot see all of the issues and cannot find a way to scroll down to see more. After a few minutes, the browser stopped responding and displayed an "unresponsive script" error.

Finally, I tested it in Internet Explorer v 9.0.8 and it displayed. It allowed me to scroll, but in order to see all issues, the display was so tiny it was unreadable. Again, the script became unresponsive and locked up the browser. I then had to kill the IE process using task manager.

So far, this plugin is not usable for us. I will be glad to test further versions, but it needs to work for all browsers mentioned as we use a mixture of browsers at our company.

Kinto Soft
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November 26, 2012

When I clicked on the Links Hierarchy tab, the screen started refreshing repeatedly and didn't seem like it was going to stop

In the 1.1.3 version, a 3 secs. trigger was added by the plugin to force the issue page to reload. I guess on some browsers the plugin toke more than 3 secs to load so the triger was fired in an infinite a loop. Bad solution. In the 1.1.4 that has been improved a lot: no trigger (so no 3 sec delay), it respects the improvements made by Atlassian to optimize the issue page reload (Jira 5.2?).

with the old Links Hierarchy Reports plugin that Atlassian Labs used to support. I am able to pull up the same 128 link issue with that plugin very quickly

128 issues and much more should be loaded very fast too. I'll investigate this more. Likely the difference is in how the issues are retrieved from the Server. The Atlassian's plugin probaly gets all the linked issues at once, while mine loads them recursively from the client. It means many calls to the server compared to the Atlasssian's one. I don't like it, but is a limitation of using the JIRA REST API. If that is the problem, I should stop using the REST API and replace it by an alternative.

It did display in Firefox, but I cannot see all of the issues and cannot find a way to scroll down to see more. After a few minutes, the browser stopped responding and displayed an "unresponsive script" error.

No stress test done for Firefox :(. I've tested it "only" on IE 9, Chrome. Just now I've displayed some issues on Firefox, it worked fine but not more than 25 linked issues. I'll repeat the stress test (1000 issues with 10.000 links) on Firefox too.

I tested it in Internet Explorer v 9.0.8 and it displayed

Well, this are some good news :)

(Continue...)

Kinto Soft
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November 26, 2012

but in order to see all issues, the display was so tiny it was unreadable

In the 1.1.3 version a new button to toggle Full Screen mode has been provided. That should provide more space to display all the issues. However, putting all them on the screen at the same time... How does the Atlassian's plugin deal with it? Any suggestion here would be very appreciated. Maybe replacing the tree by a more compact structure (radial...).

Again, the script became unresponsive and locked up the browser. I then had to kill the IE process using task manager.

My apologies for that. I have to investigate it.

I will be glad to work with you to test this. I am working in my Jira 5.1.6 test environment, which contains an older version of our production data, so it is a good place to test

Nice. Probably I'll send you some development versions in order to be tested on your enviroment if I'm not able to reproduce the issues.

Nancy Belser November 26, 2012

Thanks for the update. I did try it again in Chrome and it was improved, but not all the way there yet. It took about 75 seconds to display all links.

I liked the full screen toggle, but in order to see all issues, it was still too tiny to view. I noticed that your plugin handles scrolling differently than the other issue tabs. As an example, the issue I am viewing has a LOT of "Activity". When displaying Activity, the scroll bar on the right hand side increases in order to allow the user to scroll down beyond the bottom of the page. It will display a certain number of Activity items and will then display a "See More" button at the bottom so the user can request to see more Activity items. Again, the scroll bar increases as the number of Activity items increases.

I also noticed a feature that the old plugin provided: it allowed you to choose what link type you wanted to display. For example, I am mainly interested in 'depends on/blocks' links.

I noticed that the "Inward" and "Outward" buttons don't seem to work when I turn them off and then back on again. The screen is blank when I turn outward "off" and then stays blank when I turn it back "on".

Nancy Belser November 27, 2012

I can send you a screen shot of how the old Atlassian plugin looks. Should I send it to your support email address?

Kinto Soft
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November 30, 2012

I noticed that your plugin handles scrolling differently than the other issue tabs...

I'll try to identify when the plugin is rendered within the "Activity" tab, then reduce the high to left visible the action bar only. If an user wants to see the hiearhy tree structure, then the "full screen" button should be clicked. There is not an easy way to integrate a Flash Player based app with the "see more..." feature :-(

I can send you a screen shot of how the old Atlassian plugin looks. Should I send it to your support email address?

Yes, please send visual feedback as much as possible!. Thank you!

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Kinto Soft
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November 18, 2012

Hi Nancy,

They are smased up on top because it hangs, so the structure is not ordered.

What pattern do the linked structure has (should have) or is closer to?

  1. One parent with 128 children
  2. 129th depth.

Regards,

Pablo.

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