AX 2012. High “System Id” Number Sequence consumption or how incorrect setup can affect AX.

Recently we did a performance analysis for one of our customers using DynamicsPerf utility. Analyzing number sequence consumption, to determine preallocation quantities, we noticed high system id usage in one of the companies (50 000 per day). We went through a list of possible entities that could consume this number sequence and realized that only sales order invoices are posted on a daily basis. However, the quantity of invoices is less than ten per day and could not be a case.

After additional investigation, we found a sales order invoice posting batch job scheduled with 1-hour recurrence.

This batch job had a late selection parameter checked and quite strange selection criteria:

Bingo! As you can see here AX should process all orders irrespectively of status. In this company we had 10000 of posted sales orders, because of incorrect setup batch job iterates through each order and creates one batch task per 5 orders (depending on setup in accounts receivable parameters, that is 5 by default). Each batch task allocates new parmId from system id number sequence. So, 10000 orders will create 2000 tasks every hour that leads to 48000 tasks per day!

This is a good example how incorrect setup may add additional overhead to overall system performance creating thousands of batch tasks and doing thousands DB calls. And the fix is pretty simple – exclude invoiced orders from selection criteria.