Table 1. Advanced database configuration properties
Property Description
Database service communication area size (-pica) The value (which corresponds to the -pica command-line option) that sets the size of the database service communications area. This area is used for storage of after-image block write notifications intended for OpenEdge Replication.

The minimum value is 4 and the maximum value is 8192; the value is entered in Kb units.
Nap time increments between access attempts of PICA queue. (-picanap) The time in milliseconds before a process may access the PICA queue.

The default value is 1.
Windows Event Level (-evtlevel) The level of information written to the Windows Application Event Log. Choose from the following options:
  • None — No events are written to the Event Log.
  • Brief — Error and Warning messages are written to the Event Log.
  • Normal — Error and Warning messages are written to the Event Log along with any message that is normally written to the log file (.lg). This is the default value.
  • Full — Error, Warning, and Informational messages are written to the Event Log along with any messages generated by the Message Statement.
Lock table hash table size (-lkhash) The size of the hash table that controls access to the lock table.
Note: Progress Software Corporation recommends changing the value of this property only after contacting Technical Support.
Maximum number of database areas (-maxareas) The highest area number available for use during the time the database is online.
Nap interval (-nap) The minimum nap time in the spin lock algorithm.

The default value is 10.
Nap time increment (-napinc) The nap increment value. (Enterprise database only)
Note: Do not edit this property unless directed to do so by Progress Software Technical Support.
Nap max interval (-napmax) The maximum nap time in the spin lock algorithm before the nap time resets to the minimum.

The default value is 250.
Nap time steps between nap time (-napstep) The steps between the nap increment. (Enterprise database only)
Note: Do not edit this property unless directed to do so by Progress Software Technical Support.
Page writer max buffers (-pwwmax) The maximum number of modified database buffers to write to disk during a buffer scan cycle.

The default value is 25.
Page writer queue delay (-pwqdelay) The number of milliseconds between scans of the page writer queue.

The default value is 100.
Page writer queue minimum (-pwqmin) The minimum number of buffers required on the page writer queue before an APW writes them to disk.

The default value is 1.
Page writer scan (-pwscan) The number of buffers that an APW should scan during a buffer scan cycle.

The default value is 1.
Page writer scan delay (-pwsdelay) The number of seconds of delay between each scan of the database buffers by the APW.

The default value is 1.
Pending connection timeout (-PendConnTimeout) The amount of time a client has to connect to a server before the broker clears the client's reservation.
Semaphore sets (-semsets) The number of semaphore sets available to the database broker.

On single-processor systems, OpenEdge uses semaphores to synchronize the activities of server and self-service client processes that are connected to a database. By default, each database has an array of semaphores, one for each user or server. Each process uses its semaphore when it must wait for a shared resource. Semaphores are not used for single-user sessions or for client sessions connecting to a remote database on a server system.

By default, this value is set to 1.

When more than 1,000 users connect to a single database, there might be high contention for the semaphore set. If there is a lot of semaphore contention on a system, using multiple semaphore sets helps alleviate this contention and improves performance on high user counts.
Shared memory overflow size (-Mxs) In kilobytes, the size of the shared-memory overflow area.

This parameter replaces the default value of the shared-memory overflow area; it does not increase it. The overflow area is appended to the shared-memory area.

The default value is 0.
Pin shared memory segments (-pinshm) Prevents the database engine from swapping shared memory contents to disk.
Maximum shared-memory segment size (-shmsegsize) The maximum number of bytes, specified in MB or GB, in a shared memory segment.
Spin lock retries (-spin)

The number of times a process tries to acquire a latch before pausing.

If the process cannot acquire the resource's latch, it continues the attempt. This iterative process is called spinning.

The default value is based on the number of CPUs of the system. The default is set to 10,000 for single-CPU systems. For multi-CPU systems, the default is equal to 6,000 * # of CPUs.

If the value of this property is greater than zero, a spin lock algorithm is used for shared-memory data structures. When a process has to lock a shared-memory structure, the process attempts to acquire the latch for that structure up to the specified number of times.

If the process has not acquired the latch in the specified number of attempts, then the process pauses, or naps. The length of the pause increases gradually if the process repeatedly fails to acquire a latch. After the allotted nap time, the process wakes up and attempts to acquire the latch again. If it fails to acquire the latch, it retries up to the number of attempts specified.
Storage object cache size (-omsize) The size of the object cache for all database objects.
TXE commit lock skip limit (-TXESkipLimit) Sets the maximum SHARE/UPDATE locks that can skip the queued COMMIT locks.
Note: Do not edit this property unless directed to do so by Progress Software Technical Support.
User MUX latches (-mux) A value that controls the granularity of access to large database resources in shared memory.
Note: Do not edit this property unless directed to do so by Progress Software Technical Support.
SQL lock Wait timeout (-SQLLockWaitTimeout) The number of seconds to wait when a lock conflict occurs. This value applies to all conflicts that occur while using SQL applications. The default value is 5 seconds.
User notify time(In Seconds) (-usernotifytime) The time, in seconds, of how often a client polls for notification of a schema change. The default is 0.
STS Logging Level (-stslogginglevel) The logging level value for STS client interface logging.
The logging level:
  • 0 — none
  • 1 — fatal errors only
  • 2 — all errors
  • 3 — all errors and warnings
  • 4 — all errors, warnings, and informational messages
  • 5 — all errors, warnings, informational, and debug messages
Values less than 0 generate an error; values greater than 5 are reset to 5 internally.
Change Data Capture cache size (-cdcsize) The size, in kbytes, of both the primary and secondary CDC caches combined.

The default value is 2000 if CDC is enabled, and 200 if CDC is not enabled.
Database notify time (-dbnotifytime) The time interval, in seconds, of when a notification is sent about the synchronization betweeen server and clients database administration online operations.

The default and minimum value is 10 seconds. The maximum value is 300 seconds.