Symptoms

While running Loupe Desktop you notice that it is using an excessive amount of memory - possibly multiple GB. 

Causes

There are two main causes for this issue:

  1. Large Sessions Being Viewed: If you choose to open a large session (typically with over one million log messages) it may take considerable memory to load the entire session.  Newer versions of Loupe Desktop warn of this case and will estimate the amount of memory required.
  2. Large User Repository: The summary information of every session in the user repository is kept in memory to enhance performance.  As the repository grows above 150,000 sessions this can become a significant amount of memory

Resolution

In the case of a large session, be mindful that as sessions get over 500,000 messages the amount of memory to view them becomes nontrivial (512MB to 1GB).  While Loupe Desktop is a 64-bit application you can get to the point where it just isn't feasible to open the entire session.  As of version 3.6, Loupe Desktop will prompt before it opens a session that it projects will use more than 512MB of RAM to confirm how much of it you want to open.  If you are running an older version of Loupe Desktop, upgrade to version 3.6 or later to take advantage of this feature.


In the case of a large user repository the amount of memory will be large as soon as Loupe Desktop is fully started and never drop back.  The only resolution for this is to reduce the number of sessions in the user repository, either by manually deleting them in Loupe Desktop (which can take a considerable amount of time) or by deleting the entire user repository from disk and letting it be recreated when Loupe Desktop launches.