A published EASAP may be preloaded on an EASAP Server to shorten the time between when a User selects an EASAP and the time when the EASAP opens in a browser.

Preload mainly targets Excel Server EASAP performance. Opening times should be shorter as the preloaded instance will already have allocated a free Excel process allocated to the EASAP prior to a User opening the EASAP. A remote Excel Server will

Once the number of free Excel processes drops below a certain threshold the preloader will wait until more processes are free before allocating these scarce resources to preload another EASAP. Thus on an Excel Server under heavy load (ie. with few free Excel processes) the preload capability will have limited utility.

• In summary, priority should be given to either the EASAP's which are,
  • most commonly accessed
  • slowest to load

• A list of EASAP's to preload are set in,
  • <SERVERDATA>\easa\admin\config\context.properties
    • Add an EASAP to preload by adding its path (shown at EASA→Author→Applications)
    • To add Mortgage Calculator, for example, add the following line:
      • preloaded.easap.ids.1=examples/tutorial_mort_calc
      • Increment the 1 above for each subsequent EASAP

• Additionally,
  • In <SERVERDATA>\easa\admin\config\context.properties
    • Set easa.jsf.remote=true
  • In <SERVERDATA>\jsf-easa\admin\config\context.properties
    • Set excel.provider=local

The example above will use the most recently Published version of the EASAP.

Once the two files above have been modified, restart the EASA Server.

Fewer 'Free Processes' will appear under: EASA→Administrator→Configure→Compute Servers under Excel Servers.

Other operational properties of the preloader may be adjusted (below), though in most cases the default settings are fine.

The preloader dynamically decides if there are enough free Excel processes to allocate one to preload an EASAP.

• percentage.of.free.excel.processes.to.be.used.for.preloader=30 (by default)

The above setting will allow 30 percent of the number of free Excel threads at a particular time to be allocated to preloading EASAP's.

This setting is dynamic.

• To see this consider a case where
  • the number of simultaneous EASAP Users increases.
  • since the number of maximum Excel processes is a fixed number,
  • the number of free Excel processes will decrease.
  • → In response to this scarcity, fewer Excel threads will be allocated to preloading EASAP's