Message-ID: <24808259.1075840440689.JavaMail.evans@thyme> Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 14:56:18 -0700 (PDT) From: lisa.kinsey@enron.com To: richard.pinion@enron.com, matt.pena@enron.com Subject: RE: Path Manager Rewrite / Optimization project Cc: john.warner@enron.com, brian.ripley@enron.com, romeo.d'souza@enron.com, ramesh.rao@enron.com, victor.lamadrid@enron.com, mary.sullivan@enron.com, patti.sullivan@enron.com, kevin.heal@enron.com, theresa.staab@enron.com, j..farmer@enron.com, tammy.jaquet@enron.com, robert.superty@enron.com, kathryn.bussell@enron.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Bcc: john.warner@enron.com, brian.ripley@enron.com, romeo.d'souza@enron.com, ramesh.rao@enron.com, victor.lamadrid@enron.com, mary.sullivan@enron.com, patti.sullivan@enron.com, kevin.heal@enron.com, theresa.staab@enron.com, j..farmer@enron.com, tammy.jaquet@enron.com, robert.superty@enron.com, kathryn.bussell@enron.com X-From: Kinsey, Lisa X-To: Pinion, Richard , Pena, Matt X-cc: Warner, John , Ripley, Brian , D'Souza, Romeo , Rao, Ramesh , Lamadrid, Victor , Sullivan, Mary , Sullivan, Patti , Heal, Kevin , Staab, Theresa , Farmer, Daren J. , Jaquet, Tammy , Superty, Robert , Bussell l, Kathryn X-bcc: X-Folder: \ExMerge - Farmer, Darren\Unify X-Origin: FARMER-D X-FileName: darren farmer 6-26-02.pst My comments are in fuschia. Lisa -----Original Message----- From: =09Pinion, Richard =20 Sent:=09Wednesday, October 10, 2001 2:35 PM To:=09Pena, Matt Cc:=09Warner, John; Ripley, Brian; D'Souza, Romeo; Rao, Ramesh; Kinsey, Lis= a; Lamadrid, Victor; Sullivan, Mary; Sullivan, Patti; Heal, Kevin; Staab, T= heresa; Farmer, Daren J.; Jaquet, Tammy; Superty, Robert; Bussell l, Kathry= n Subject:=09RE: Path Manager Rewrite / Optimization project Following are my comments. The managers cc'd might have some additional th= oughts. -----Original Message----- From: =09Pena, Matt =20 Sent:=09Monday, October 08, 2001 4:26 PM To:=09Pinion, Richard; Jaquet, Tammy; Superty, Robert; Pena, Matt Cc:=09Warner , John ; Ripley, Brian; D'Souza, Romeo; Rao, Ramesh Subject:=09Path Manager Rewrite / Optimization project Importance:=09High All: We're currently identifying processes that are inefficient and could possib= ly benefit from being rewritten or not even performed. Going foward, I wou= ld like Bob to appoint a lead business person to whom we could ask question= s and or suggest ideas to so that they could in turn validate this informat= ion with the desk managers/schedulers. We had this approach with Nomlogic = and having Clarissa work the issues worked quite nicely. Who ever you choo= se, we would need about 15% of their time for now. Later on, with coordina= tion efforts and testing, it may go up to 75%. I don't see that happening = for a while though. The sooner we get someone to devote to this, the better off we will be. I = expect these changes that we'll be looking into should improve performance = quite a bit. =20 That being said, we've identified three items that would speed up processin= g the retrieval of Path Manager. =20 1) Currently, the Path Manager attempts to reuse Path Ids. I can't think = of any reason why we need to perform this extra step? It runs through th= is processing on the application and generally doesn't find a match. I kno= w Patti has mentioned this several times and I can't think of a valid reaso= n for performing this work. I talked with Dave Nommensen, and according to= him, what used to happen is that sometimes schedulers would get duplicate = paths out there which is why they put this code in place??? From a schedul= ing perspective, my understanding of what your main concern is to just main= tain your position and be able to change it. If you were overpathed, you'd= see it in the Path Manager either way. [Pinion, Richard] To restate the= question for clarity, in path manager a scheduler pulls down a supply, mar= ket and a service, adds any up/downstream contract information and/or Duns = or DRN override and then saves it. Unify looks for an old path with those = exact variables and if it finds it re-uses it and if it does not find an ex= act match creates a new path and path id. I had been told that to do away = with this function would create an unacceptably high amount of paths since = any path once nominated on could not be deleted. Has this changed??? At o= ne time there were some schedulers that looked for the same path / activity= number match for nominations. Texas Eastern was the only pipeline that ne= eded the old activity numbers no matter how long it had been since they wer= e used. I spoke with Chris Ordway and the new LINK system no longer needs = this to occur. Transco uses activity numbers but uses the Activity number = cross reference table to that function and therefore should not be affected= . Therefore, if it does not create a space or memory problem for Unify, I = don't think that this constant old path look up is needed. [Kinsey, Lisa]= Get rid of this. =20 2) The scheduling position window: does anyone use this? If not, we'll r= emove the code logic that populates this window. I have never seen a sched= uler use this. Please verify. [Pinion, Richard] Originally such a window= was in use by everyone in the legacy system "Autonoms" so it was duplicate= d in Unify by request. It is not used in Unify now because of the other so= phisticated tools Unify provides which obviate it's use. The only value wo= uld be notification of bridge errors or contract imbalances but there are o= ther ways to determine those problems. As voted on in a previous meeting o= f the managers - Lose it! [Kinsey, Lisa] Why is this still here?=09=20 3) On the inventory pool list, does anyone need to see the Contarct Refere= nces List? Again, this code is called every retrieval time and doesn't app= ear to be used from my observations. If they do need this information, we= could provide it, but if not, I'd prefer to remove the functionality. [Pin= ion, Richard] This function is still very much in use by those with poin= t based pipelines that must use the imbalance pool to facilitate balancing = nomination volumes where multiple pipeline external pools exist and are pat= hed through the same contract imbalance pool. Keep it! [Kinsey, Lisa] Ye= s. We use this functionality a lot when pathing pools.=09=20 4) When pathing a one to many or many to one set of paths, what's the aver= age number of paths they create at one time? What about updates? I know t= hat ANR and NIGAS are big users of this feature since they have small packa= ges of gas that they are limited in size to. Does the system seem faster w= hen you update one record at a time or chunks of records? My real question= is how often they do this and for what number of paths on both Updates and= Inserts. By update, I mean, going to the path list and changing an upstre= am / downstream contract or a PSNA which in turn forces a new path to be cr= eated. [Pinion, Richard] This one to many or many to one pathing goes on= every day on every pipeline. There is no 'average'. They typically updat= e a path with up/downstream meters or duns or dnb numbers one at a time how= ever. I hope this answers your question. I see no change to this process = at this time [Kinsey, Lisa] On some pipes this function is used more than= others. When it is used we try and do as many paths as possible. At this= time I do not see a need to change this process. =09=20 5) On brokered paths, do you want to utilize the same logic we have for Se= rvice? In other words, when updating Brokered arrangements, we don't incor= porate the same logic for zeroing out the path and recreating a new arrangm= ent link and hence sending it to be renominated? Why do we do this for ser= vice? Is it because we have to renominate it? I assume that's what it's f= or since we don't send brokered paths to the pipe. Anyway, with the Nomlog= ic implmentation (two way interface), we were planning on having it behave = the same way as service. We need this verified. [Pinion, Richard] We do= n't perform the same logic for Brokered paths because these are not nominat= ed to the pipeline and hence do not need a zero path to be resent to the pi= peline when a significant change is made to the already nominated path. I = don't see a need to change the way Brokered paths are behaving at this time= . [Kinsey, Lisa] Agree with Richard.=09=20