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AE limits

  • 1.  AE limits

    Posted Feb 01, 2018 08:49 AM
    Edited by Michael A. Lowry 24 days ago

    Below is a list of Automation Engine limits.

    Item Limit Allowed characters, etc. Regular Expression1
    Object name 200 characters A-Z, 0-9, ., _, -, @, #, $ (See also: Naming conventions) ^[A-Z0-9@#$\._\-]{1,200}$
    User object name 200 characters Same as for object name, but with exactly one '/' character separating the user name and the department. ^[A-Z0-9@#$\._\-/]{1,200}$
    Task alias 200 characters Same as for object name. Can be further limited by ALIAS_SPECIAL_CHARACTERS in UC_CLIENT_SETTINGS ^[A-Z0-9@#$\._\-]{1,200}$
    Object title 512 characters

    Any UTF-8 character2
    Was 255 characters prior to v24.

    ^\P{C}{0,512}$

    Archive key 1 512 characters
    Same as for object title. UTF-8 since v24.
    Was 60 characters prior to v24.

    ^\P{C}{0,512}$

    Archive key 2 512 characters Same as for object title. UTF-8 since v24.
    Was 20 characters prior to v24.

    ^\P{C}{0,512}$

    Int. account 16 bytes3 Same as for object title. UTF-8 since v24.

    ^\P{C}$

    ^[\u0000-\uFFFF]{0,16}

    Max. return code 10 digits 0-9. ^[0-9]{1,10}$
    Folder name 255 characters Same as for object name. ^[A-Z0-9@#$\._\-]{1,255}$
    Script variable name 32 characters4 A-Z, a-z, 0-9, _, $, @, §, #
    First character must not be a number or a $ symbol. Partially case-preserving, but not case-sensitive.
    ^\&[A-Za-z0-9_\$@§#]{1,32}$
    Array name 24 characters4 Same as for Script variable name. ^\&[A-Za-z0-9_\$@§#]{1,24}$
    Object/prompt set variable name 32 characters4 A-Z, 0-9, _, $, @, §, #
    First letter must not be a number. Not case sensitive.
    ^\&[A-Z][A-Z0-9_\$@§#]{1,31}$
    Script variable value 8,388,608 bytes
    (223)
    Allowed characters: Same as for object title. UTF-8 since v24.
    Maximum length limited by MAX_VARIABLE_SIZE in UC_SYSTEM_SETTINGS.
    Valid range: 1024–8388608 bytes. Octupled in v24.

    ^\P{C}$

    ^[\u0000-\uFFFF]{0,8388608}

    Object variable value Unlimited Allowed characters: Same as for object title
    Length unlimited since v11.1Multi-line text since v11.1. UTF-8 since v24.
    ^.+$
    Scripting tab line ? bytes/chars Same as for object title. UTF-8 since v24.
    Static VARA key 200 characters Allowed characters: Same as for object title. UTF-8 since v24. ^.{1,200}$
    Static VARA value Unlimited Allowed characters: Same as for object title
    Length unlimited since v11.1Multi-line text since v11.1. UTF-8 since v24.
    ^.+$
    Agent/Agent Group name 32 characters A-Z, 0-9, ., _, - ^[A-Z0-9\._\-]{0,32}$
    Client 4 decimal digits 0-9 (0 is reserved for the system client. 0001-9999 are available for normal clients.) ^[0-9]{4}$
    System name 8 characters A-Z, 0-9, _ ^[A-Z,0-9,_]{8}$
    Time zone 8 characters ?
    Service Manager destination/phrase 16 characters A-Z, a-z, 0-9, _, - The SMgr actually supports destination names up to 31 characters, but the Automation Engine and AWI have problems with names longer than 16 characters. ^[A-Z0-9_\-]{0,16}$
    Run ID 2,147,483,647
    (231-1)
    The Automation Engine stores run IDs internally as 31-bit integers.
    Tasks per workflow Unlimited Workflows with many tasks may cause high memory consumption & poor UI performance. (See the discussion on AE & AWI sizing.)
    Levels of nested workflows Unlimited Was 16 prior to version 10.
    Levels of nested JOBIs 16 See Includes (JOBI). Prior to version 12.3, the nesting limit was 5 levels, e.g., in version 12.2.
    Levels of task recursion 9999
    (Default: 16)
    Adjust via MAX_NESTING_DEPTH in UC_SYSTEM_SETTINGS.
    :PRINT line 1024 characters Lines longer than 1024 characters are truncated at 1021 characters, and the last three characters are replaced with '...'.
    Script lines per scripting tab 32,767 (216-1) See Process Pages in the AE documentation.
    Generated JCL lines 1024 Can be increased if necessary by setting MAX_JCL_LINES job attribute.
    Rows per static VARA Unlimited Limited only by the underlying database.
    Characters in SQL VARA 4096 Applies to SQL, SQL, SEC_SQL, and SEC_SQLI VARA objects.
    Rows returned by SQL VARA 500,000
     (Default: 200)
    Adjust via SQLVAR_MAX_ROWS in UC_SYSTEM_SETTINGS.
    Rows returned by BACKEND VARA 500,000
     (Default: 200)
    Adjust via BACKENDVAR_MAX_ROWS in UC_SYSTEM_SETTINGS.
    # of search results returned: objects 20,000 (Default: 5000) Adjust via GENERIC_SEARCH_LIMIT  in UC_SYSTEM_SETTINGS.
    # of search results returned: active tasks 20,000 (Default: 5000) Adjust via GENERIC_ACTIVITIES_LIMIT  in UC_SYSTEM_SETTINGS.
    # of search results displayed in the AWI: active tasks Unknown (Default: 500) Adjust via COMBINED_ACTIVITIES_LIMIT  in UC_SYSTEM_SETTINGS. This setting affects the AWI only, not the JUI or Java/REST APIs.
    # of search results returned: statistical records 20,000 (Default: 5000) Adjust via GENERIC_STATISTICS_LIMIT  in UC_SYSTEM_SETTINGS.
    XML export/import: file size 30 MB Can be further limited using MAX_IMPORT_SIZE system setting. Exporting/importing very large XML files may cause high memory consumption & poor UI performance. (See the discussion on AE & AWI sizing.)
    XML export: # of objects 1,000,000 (Default: 1000) Adjust via MAX_EXPORT_COUNT  in UC_SYSTEM_SETTINGS.

    Items in bold have been updated recently.


    Notes:

    1. The regular expressions included here can be used to programmatically validate adherence to the corresponding limits.
    2. Support for UTF-8 was added in v24. Many fields (e.g., object title) now allow entry of any UTF-8 character. Prior to version 24, these fields allowed only characters in the Latin-1 character set.
    3. Some fields have a maximum number of bytes, but allow multi-byte characters. For these fields, it is not possible to use a single regex to validate both the type of characters and the byte count. Therefore 2 regexes are provided: the first validates the type of characters in the string, and the second validates the length of the string in bytes.
    4. Variable names are actually limited to 32 bytes. In the Latin-1 character set, the chapter symbol (§) required just one byte, but with UTF-8 encoding, this character requires two bytes. For this reason, in v24 and later, each § symbol used in a variable name reduces by two the total number of remaining characters allowed. See the topic Variable Names on the documentation page Universal Language Support (Unicode).

    Sources:

    1. Naming conventions
    2. Attributes for all job types
    3. Static VARA
    4. ucsrv.ini
    5. UC_SYSTEM_SETTINGS

    Please comment below if you know of an AE limit you’d like to contribute to the list.



  • 2.  AE limits

    Posted Feb 01, 2018 09:00 AM
    Maybe it would make sense to put also some additional findings here on a separate list?

    Like for instance the current limit on print to 1023 characters - Print maximum number of data in a variable



  • 3.  AE limits

    Posted Feb 01, 2018 10:12 AM

    Many documentation pages mention that a field may contain any characters of the data type string. The documentation on Script variables lists the data types:

    • unsigned - positive integers
    • signed - negative and positive integers
    • float - positive and negative floating-point numbers*
    • string - string, the value must be enclosed in inverted commas (script literal)

    * Internally, the Automation Engine treats float values as IEEE754 doubles, for more precise floating point arithmetic.

    I could find no description of the characters that are permitted in the string data type. Is this documented anywhere? Does it depend on the language environment or OS?



  • 4.  AE limits

    Posted Mar 13, 2018 08:45 AM

    PRB00221501 has been opened to clarify which characters are allowed in the string data type.



  • 5.  AE limits

    Posted Mar 13, 2018 08:53 AM
    Hi Michael_Lowry

    another limitation to TASK Alises - they are only allowed in uppercase letters.
    This was a especially bad finding if you want to use VARA keys as Task ALIAS names.....

    Limit for static VARA objects regarding amount of lines: NONE
    the limit is the  DB Performance

    cheers, Wolfgang


  • 6.  AE limits

    Posted Mar 15, 2018 09:15 AM
    Automic updated the problem ticket to clarify that the string data type allows any character of the Latin1 character set:
    String of any length, all characters that correspond to the Latin1 codepage can be used.
    Be careful when you copy & paste contents from browsers or other tools. They might use a different type of encoding that does not work.
    I have updated the table above. Automic will update the documentation soon.


  • 7.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Oct 16, 2019 12:21 PM
    Edited by Michael A. Lowry Mar 03, 2021 04:50 AM
    In a recent roadmap talk, product management indicated that UTF-8 support is planned for some fields.

    I guess we won't be able to use emoji in object names.



  • 8.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Oct 17, 2019 04:55 AM
    <emoji>
        sad_emoji
    </emoji>

    Last I heard someone talked about "full support" for UTF-8 but that's why we (possibly) can't have nice things. Or, maybe it's just the alternative variant of "full". As in: for very small values of "full".

    <emoji>
      speechbubble_emoji
    </emoji>

    Sorry, could not resist.

    <emoji>
      wink_emoji
    </emoji>


  • 9.  Re: AE limits

    Posted Aug 10, 2018 10:05 AM

    I added a bunch more limits, including many of the ones set in UC_SYSTEM_SETTINGS.



  • 10.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Sep 17, 2019 03:00 AM
    I added regular expressions for some items, e.g, object name & script variable name.


  • 11.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Oct 03, 2019 03:07 AM
    Please note that due to a bug in the forum platform (Higher Logic), in the above table (as in all other discussion threads), the chapter symbol is not displayed correctly

    The chapter symbol should look like this:
    Instead, it appears as an at symbol (@). Because of this bug, in a couple of the regular expressions above, two at symbols appear instead of an at symbol followed by a chapter symbol.


  • 12.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Oct 03, 2019 11:52 AM
    Another AE limit;

    If you have a SQL statement that exceeds 4,000 characters of statement code, you will not be able to store and run it in a VARA.SQL or VARA.SQLI object.

    ------------------------------
    Pete
    ------------------------------



  • 13.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Jul 20, 2020 10:41 AM
    Does this limit still exist? Is it documented anywhere?


  • 14.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Jul 20, 2020 10:54 AM
    Edited by Pete Wirfs Jul 20, 2020 10:56 AM
    I just confirmed it still exists in 12.3.  The AWI throws an error message of "the maximum length is 4096 characters".  And the documentation also states "Maximum length: 4096 characters".

    https://docs.automic.com/documentation/webhelp/english/ALL/components/DOCU/12.3/Automic%20Automation%20Guides/help.htm#AWA/Variables/varaSQLI.htm

    As someone who has written a lot of complex SQL, I find this restriction unpleasant.

    ------------------------------
    Pete Wirfs
    SAIF Corporation
    Salem Oregon USA
    ------------------------------



  • 15.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Jul 20, 2020 11:12 AM
    Ok, thanks. I've added it to the list.


  • 16.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Oct 10, 2019 08:13 AM
    Are the limits of 22 Characters for passwords in login objects increased?


  • 17.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Oct 10, 2019 12:01 PM
    Hi Hans-Juergen,
    since 12.1 the password length for a Login Object is set to unlimited and all characters are allowed (including commas)

    ------------------------------
    Thx & rgds
    Christian
    ------------------------------



  • 18.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Feb 25, 2021 10:31 AM
    I added an entry for the Service Manager destination/phrase, based on findings reported in another thread.


  • 19.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Mar 03, 2021 02:30 AM
    Hi @Michael A. Lowry

    Thanks for all your efforts, your contributions are most appreciated!
    3 more limits:
    • nested JOBI's =>  5 (https://docs.automic.com/documentation/webhelp/english/AWA/12.2/DOCU/12.2/AWA%20Guides/help.htm#AWA/Objects/obj_include.htm?Highlight=jobi)
    • nested Workflows => unlimited (including V10 - I believe - it was 16)
    • also check => MAX_NESTING_DEPTH
    Cheers
    Christoph 




    Cheers
    Christoph 


    ------------------------------
    ----------------------------------------------------------------
    Automic AE Consultant and Trainer since 2000
    ----------------------------------------------------------------
    ------------------------------



  • 20.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Mar 03, 2021 04:48 AM
    Edited by Michael A. Lowry Mar 03, 2021 05:18 AM
    @Christoph Rekers I added these items to the list. Thanks!
    ​​


  • 21.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Mar 03, 2021 05:24 AM
    Edited by Michael A. Lowry Mar 03, 2021 05:36 AM
    I restored the regular expressions column. Somehow it got removed during a previous round of editing.

    Because Higher Logic lacks a proper table editor, I have to use a cumbersome and error-prone method when editing this post:
    1. Copy the existing table.
    2. Paste it into MS Word, or another more capable web-based rich text editor like the one in Jive.
    3. Edit the table and copy it.
    4. Paste it back into the Higher Logic editor.
    5. Fix all of the formatting that became corrupted along the way.
    6. Save the edits.

    Someday I might tire of this.



  • 22.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Mar 05, 2021 05:39 AM
    Edited by Michael A. Lowry Mar 05, 2021 05:40 AM
    @Elina McCafferty: perhaps you'd like to add a list like this to the documentation.



  • 23.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Mar 22, 2021 06:55 PM
    I don't know whether you considered this, but I guess there is an actual limit as for the length of the object variable. While playing with really big promptest inputs I reached: 

    U00020821 Runtime error in object 'JOBS.SQL.NEW.1', line '00000': Value of paramter '1' too long. Allowed length is '1048576' because of system setting MAX_VARIABLE_SIZE
    This limit was discussed also couple of years ago


    ------------------------------
    Cheers,
    Marcin
    ------------------------------



  • 24.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Mar 14, 2022 07:28 AM
    Edited by Michael A. Lowry Mar 14, 2022 07:28 AM
    I added information on MAX_VARIABLE_SIZE. Broadcom Support says the documentation will be updated soon.


  • 25.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Jul 22, 2021 11:59 AM
    There is no limit on the number of client objects or folders, correct?
    I shall log in Ideation item.
    I'd like to limit the overall number of objects developers deploy to test environments, as they never delete them otherwise.

    Thanks!


  • 26.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Mar 02, 2022 04:55 AM
    @Michael A. Lowry I was checking the Agent ROLE you provide in the Agent configuration, and in the DB it is a varchar(256), but the value is cut down to 240 chars. At least this was my result on V21 and Postgres. Might be worth putting on the list? 


    ------------------------------
    Cheers,
    Marcin
    ------------------------------



  • 27.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Nov 20, 2022 02:38 AM
    I just ran into a bug/limitation in the RA WebServices REST agent. The names of variables defined in the response handling section of REST jobs are limited to 24 characters, including the leading ampersand (&).

    See KB article 119964.


  • 28.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Nov 21, 2022 05:32 AM
    Hi Michael

    because of all the limititations and unflexibility of the REST API, we decided to use the Java API.
    The REST API is for simple "quick & dirty" workarounds/implementations.
    The Java API gives you almost full flexibility.

    ------------------------------
    Best regards

    Peter Gross
    Senior System Engineer
    Raiffeisen Schweiz
    St. Gallen Switzerland
    ------------------------------



  • 29.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Nov 21, 2022 05:41 AM
    I added a separate row in the table for Array names.

    The names of arrays are limited to 24 characters, presumably because internally, the AE uses the remaining 8 bytes to store the index of each element.

    This limit impacts all arrays, whether they are defined using the :DEFINE scripting statement, or via the response handling step of a REST job.


  • 30.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Mar 30, 2023 03:29 AM
    Edited by Michael A. Lowry Jul 17, 2023 06:12 AM

    I updated all links in the document to point to the v21 documentation.



  • 31.  RE: AE limits

    Posted Jul 17, 2023 06:20 AM
    Edited by Michael A. Lowry Jul 17, 2023 06:20 AM

    I updated the entry for Levels of nested JOBIs to reflect the fact that the maximum number of nesting levels for JOBIs is now 16.

    The maximum was increased from 5 to 16 starting in version 12.3. The documentation incorrectly states that there is no maximum.

    Thanks to @Christoph Rekers.



  • 32.  RE: AE limits

    Posted 27 days ago

    I made a preliminary update to the list of AE Limits to reflect the changes I know of that were introduced in version 24. Most notably, fields that previously allowed only Latin-1 characters now permit any UTF-8 character.

    If anyone is aware of other relevant changes introduced in v24, please let me know.




  • 33.  RE: AE limits

    Posted 24 days ago

    Hi @Michael A. Lowry

    ArchiveKey limits are now 512 bytes. As UTF-8 characters might require more than one byte to store, this is quiet an interesting limitation.

    Source: https://docs.automic.com/documentation/webhelp/english/AA/24.0/DOCU/24.0/Automic%20Automation%20Guides/Content/AWA/Workflows/wf_Attributes.htm?Highlight=archive%20key



    ------------------------------
    ☎️ Swisscom Automation Engineer & 🧙 PE Membership Creator

    Automic Kurse, Tutorials, Tools und mehr auf:
    https://membership.philippelmer.com/
    Zwei Wochen kostenlos testen!
    ------------------------------



  • 34.  RE: AE limits

    Posted 24 days ago

    Hi @Michael A. Lowry and @Joel Wiesmann

    Broadcom mentioned at various events, that they (mostly) changed the byte-limits to char-limits for V24, to make the bahaviour more predictable from a user perspective.

    The Archive Key fields in the database are 512 chars, not bytes as stated in the documentation.



    ------------------------------
    Philipp Elmer

    Become a member!
    https://membership.philippelmer.com
    ------------------------------



  • 35.  RE: AE limits

    Posted 24 days ago
    Edited by Michael A. Lowry 24 days ago

    @Joel Wiesmann & @Philipp Elmer:

    Thanks for your input! I have updated the table.

    Based on your comment Philipp, it looks like I'll have to update it again. Could you kindly verify which fields have byte limits and which ones have character limits?

    Update: I did some quick tests and found that Object title, Archive key 1, and Archive key 2 allow 512 characters irrespective of the number of bytes required per character. Internal account on the other hand allows only 16 bytes, so the number of characters allowed will be fewer than 16 if multi-byte characters are used.



  • 36.  RE: AE limits

    Posted 24 days ago
    Edited by Michael A. Lowry 24 days ago

    I opened a support ticket reporting the mistakes in the documentation.

    The documentation pages describing the attributes of AE objects include several mistakes.

    Pages affected include:

    Mistakes include:

    • OBJECT_TITLE is actually limited to 512 characters, not 255 bytes as stated in the documentation.
    • ARCHIVE_KEY1 and ARCHIVE_KEY2 are actually limited to 512 characters, not 512 bytes as stated in the documentation.

    Other potential problems:

    • It seems that the effort to update the documentation to describe changes related to Unicode support was perhaps a bit overzealous. For many fields, a maximum length in bytes is indicated, even though multi-byte characters are not allowed in these fields. (E.g., QUEUE, TIMEZONE.) It might make more sense to indicate these maximum lengths in characters as in the earlier documentation.
    • Also, many pages documenting object attributes include maximum lengths for fields that are read-only, such as USER_CREATED. This might be confusing to users.


  • 37.  RE: AE limits

    Posted 24 days ago

    Hi @Michael A. Lowry

    I'm just checking the uc_ddl.sql file for V24, and I'm just using the Oracle version of the file (to keep things ****).

    All *_IntAccount-columns are defined as "VARCHAR2 (16 CHAR)", so Internal Account is also in characters.

    How did you check the field sizes?



    ------------------------------
    Philipp Elmer

    Become a member!
    https://membership.philippelmer.com
    ------------------------------



  • 38.  RE: AE limits

    Posted 24 days ago
    Edited by Michael A. Lowry 24 days ago

    @Philipp Elmer wrote:

    How did you check the field sizes?

    I just tried a couple of combinations in the AWI and found I could insert 16 ASCII characters, or 8 grinning face emoji (😀) characters.

    I did some tests using different characters and found that the 8 character limit kicks in at 4 bytes per character.

    Character Code point
    Hex bytes
    Number permitted in
    Int. Account field.
    A U+0041 41 16
    א U+05D0 D7 90 16
    U+262F E2 98 AF 16
    😀 U+1F600 F0 9F 98 80 8

    I reproduced this behavior on two systems:

    • AA v24.0.0 on Oracle
    • AAKE v21.0.9 on Postgres


  • 39.  RE: AE limits

    Posted 23 days ago
    Edited by Michael A. Lowry 23 days ago

    A few more tests revealed that the AE is saving only the first 16 bytes of data to the DB. Only complete characters are saved to the DB, so it doesn't truncate in the middle of a character.

    I see two possibilities:

    1. Field validation is broken, incorrectly imposing an upper limit of 64 bytes instead of 16; or
    2. Inserting the data is broken, incorrectly saving only the first 16 bytes’ worth of completely encoded characters.

    Either way, it seems like a bug. I opened another support ticket.



  • 40.  RE: AE limits

    Posted 23 days ago
    Edited by Michael A. Lowry 23 days ago

    Using the AE REST API POST ​/{client_id}​/objects, it is possible to import an object with an Internal Account field having greater than 16 bytes - up to and including 16 4-byte characters1. The AE gladly writes all of these characters to the DB. Unfortunately, any subsequent attempt to open, rename, or export the object results in WP crashes and forced traces2.

    It's clear that some parts of the AE have been updated to handle these larger fields, and other parts of the application have not.

    Notes

    1. Attempting to import an object with 17 characters in the account field results in this error:
      {
          "code": 45469,
          "error": "Validation of input failed.",
          "details": "No detail information available.",
          "validation_errors": [
              {
                  "code": 45163,
                  "error": "Property 'account' exceeds maximum length '16'",
                  "path": "account",
                  "invalid_value": "a😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀"
              }
          ]
      }
    2. The problem can be resolved by importing a version of the object with characters totalling 64 bytes or fewer in the account field.


  • 41.  RE: AE limits

    Posted 23 days ago

    Very interesting findings! Have you opened a ticket for this? 



    ------------------------------
    Philipp Elmer

    Become a member!
    https://membership.philippelmer.com
    ------------------------------



  • 42.  RE: AE limits

    Posted 23 days ago
    Edited by Michael A. Lowry 23 days ago

    @Philipp Elmer: Yes, I updated the existing case with details about the scenario that triggers WP crashes.



  • 43.  RE: AE limits

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted 23 days ago

    Hi,

    please share your NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS setting.

    Regards, Markus




  • 44.  RE: AE limits

    Posted 23 days ago
    Edited by Michael A. Lowry 23 days ago

    Hi @Markus Embacher.

    20240227/085740.198 - U00003535 DB INFO: 'NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS           = BYTE'
    


  • 45.  RE: AE limits

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted 23 days ago

    Are you using the GA version or a beta/validation release?




  • 46.  RE: AE limits

    Posted 23 days ago
    Edited by Michael A. Lowry 23 days ago

    It's the GA version, 24.0.0. (Unfortunately, we never got a real chance to test the pre-release version due to problems with the migration tool.)