Hello all,

I am getting some strange behavior and I was wondering if anyone had seen it or had ideas for troubleshooting.

I have a constituent attribute called "Region" that can have 4 different values:
Northeast
Southeast and Southwest
West Coast
Midwest

I have no problems when I search for:
Region <equals> West Coast

But the query hangs when I search for:
Region <does not equal> West Coast

Now, I know that <does not equal> is a lot harder to calculate but I can search successfully for <does not equal> on all of the other regions without a problem. It is just specifically "West Coast" that hangs. I have let it run for over an hour and still get nothing while the other regions come back in less than 30 seconds.

Anyone seen this or have troubleshooting ideas?

Thanks

One thing I have tried is to start from scratch with a new query. You can write a new query identical to the broken query and it may work they way you expect. Then delete the old query. I've even asked someone else in the office to write a new query under their user name and had it work.

For me these odd behaviors usually occur with queries that have been working and then for some reason begin to slow down or fail completely rather than new queries. Sometimes running the maintenance tasks like rebuilding indexes within the BB Management Console helps.

If you want to continue troubleshooting this query or a new query with the same issues:

Try using the <not one of> operator instead. If it still hangs on West Coast add a second criteria so <not one of> West Coast, Midwest and see if that runs without hanging.

If the attribute is required on every record then you could use a query that uses the operator <one of> everything except West Coast. If the attribute is not required then try <one of> everything except West Coast and attribute Region is <not blank>.

These ideas won't tell you what is wrong but will give you more info to discuss with Blackbaud help or help you land on an alternative method to get the same data.

As I'm sure you know there are subtle differences between <does not equal> and <not one of> so make sure you are getting the desired results.

Curious to hear if you come up with a cause for the behavior.

Thanks for the great suggestions!

Things I have tried that DIDN'T work:
Make a new entry in the attribute table and reassign all "West Coast" (I really thought this would work!)
Make a fresh query
Have someone else run/make the query

What DID work:
Use <not one of> with only "West Coast"

So, still no idea why it doesn't work normally, but at least I can get the results I need!

I am using this to reassign incorrect regions (their state is West Coast but the region is not) so I think <not one of> should work. I have another query that assigns the attribute for West Coast addresses that don't already have the attribute. The difference between <not one of> and <does not equal> is for counting blank entries and attributes that don't exist right?

Thanks

Glycerol wrote:


I would have had high hopes for this one too.


Glycerol wrote:


In this case there shouldn't be a difference between <not one of> and <does not equal> since you are only excluding West Coast in each method. Constituents are either in or out of a constituent query and both of these operators should act the same in the case of an attribute exclusion. Blank entries and records with no Region attribute should still show up in a query that only excludes those with the West Coast entry.

Are you on 7.92? There's some issue with <does not equal> in 7.92 and the workaround so far has indeed been to change it to <not one of>. I posted about it here: www.blackbus.org/index.php?option=com_ku...amp;Itemid=321#40472

Yes, we just moved to 7.92 which I assume was part of the problem but I hadn't seen any discussion of this.

It looks like a related problem although it's not that people are showing up who shouldn't, but the query never completing.

Although the complaint I am hearing most from my users is that "quick find" no longer picks up the first name!