What are the expected behaviors for the xConnect Pools Databases?

Question

I am looking at the xdb pools database on a 9.0.1 instance. I see 3 tables with data in them:

• GenericProcessingPools
• GenericProcessingPoolDefinitions
• InteractionLiveProcessingPool

The InteractionLiveProcessingPool had a backlog of items to process. I have cleared the error that was preventing records from processing. The number of rows in this table is steadily going down, and should clear itself out after about 9 days; it's a long time, but it's better than where it was at.

The GenericProcessingPools is still steadily increasing, and it looks like records aren't being processed at all. Attempts is 0 for most rows.

A few questions:

1. What does the information in this table represent?
2. Should it be going down like the other table(s)?
3. Is there a good place to look to see why it's not decreasing?

I am monitoring the processing server logs, and have successfully cleared all errors. I am wondering where else I should be looking, or if I should just be ignoring that table.

Answer 1

I ended up opening a ticket with Sitecore to get some answers on what was going on. Below is the information I received from them.

1. What does the information in this table represent? The rows in this table correlate to interactions that would be processed by Path Analyzer aggregation process. You can map a row to the GenericProcessingPoolDefinitions table to see which process is expected to handle it (historical or live).

2. Should it be going down like the other table(s)? Yes; it should drain like other processing pools. There is a defect where every time the processing server is restarted, it creates new definitions for path analyzer. Any old rows after a reset would not get processed. Reference Number: 336049.

Sitecore provided a hotfix for fixing the issue with the definitions: 9.0.1

The defect is not resolved until Sitecore 10. You should reach out to Sitecore Support if you need to get a hold of a compatible patch for your Sitecore version.

We applied the fix and truncated our old records. After that, Path Analyzer started working!