Queries with 3+ conditionals taking forever to run

Andrew Blue

Hi all -

I am a new user to Raiser's Edge, and looking for how people best pull lists for various emails and physical mailings. I have generally been resorting to the query tool so I can specify a mailing to a specific constituency code, attribute, head of household, etc. With that, I have found that any time I try to specify around 3+ conditional statements in my query criteria, the query ends up running for a very long time and eventually my application just crashes.

What is the best way to handle larger lists in Raiser's Edge when I am trying to have lots of criteria for what I want the records in the list to meet? Is there a better way to be doing this than query?

Any help here would be fantastic!

Thanks!!

JoAnn Strommen

@Andrew Blue One suggestion for physical mailings would be to not use HOH as query criteria but as add it as option when Exporting.

Just some other thoughts…
What kind of #s are you expecting to pull using all the criteria? Do you have the Queue function to have it run overnight?
Have you considered separate queries and then merging? It might not save time but might avoid application crashing.
Sometimes the order of the criteria seems to be a factor - don't know for sure but I try to start with most basic first like constituent code.
If nothing else, you may need to split it into multiple queries by ID# or Last Name starts with…again to avoid application crashing.

I've had some that have taken hours but not to point of crashing. Best wishes.

Elizabeth Johnson

@Andrew Blue If you could share an example of one that is taking a long time we could probably give more pointers. I echo all that @JoAnn Strommen shared.

Karen Diener 2

@JoAnn Strommen:

@Andrew Blue One suggestion for physical mailings would be to not use HOH as query criteria but as add it as option when Exporting.

Just some other thoughts…
What kind of #s are you expecting to pull using all the criteria? Do you have the Queue function to have it run overnight?
Have you considered separate queries and then merging? It might not save time but might avoid application crashing.
Sometimes the order of the criteria seems to be a factor - don't know for sure but I try to start with most basic first like constituent code.
If nothing else, you may need to split it into multiple queries by ID# or Last Name starts with…again to avoid application crashing.

I've had some that have taken hours but not to point of crashing. Best wishes.

Really good suggestions by JoAnn, and I have a few more questions / suggestions:

Have you been able to run the Query successfully before? They do sometimes become corrupt, especially when complicated. It is infrequent but it does happen, and I've had to rebuild them on occasion.

When I have Queries with parenthetical statements, I often break them up to run one set of criteria at a time. This just helps isolate that each grouping is running as expected. For example, if there are 3 sets of criteria, I save the query, remove the second two sets, and run the Query. Assuming it runs correctly, I close it, reopen, and remove the 1st and 3rd sets of criteria - basically, testing the second set to see if it runs. Obviously you could handle this specific process in various ways. But this has helped me identify where something went wrong. I may have missed an operator and inadvertently selected the wrong one and am essentially pulling every record in the database.

I too have had some queries take an hour or so, but it isn't too often lately. And very rare that I've had one crash. Report back and let us know your success!

Karen

Joe Moretti 3

@Andrew Blue I have sent this before to the community. If using a query with various criteria, make each query a separate one and then use the segmentation aspect of RE MAIL Quick Letters. Put together all the various queries you are using, then in RE MAIL, put each of those queries into the SEGMENT Tab and use a hierarchy for the queries. Using the segment will see that your output will not contain duplicates, since if someone happens to be in two or three queries, it will only pull them once. Below is an example. You will not need to have an output query, I had it because I was doing something with them. I like using this because you can also determine if someone has a record and if they are a contact for an Organization, you can choose to mail to just the IND record or both. You can also choose if you want an appeal and/or package attached to each of the records as well.

If you are not using RE Mail in database view for mailings, you are missing out on a simple process.

No reason to use some APP or pay for some new product, when there are tools already available in RE Database.