Analytica User FAQs/Editions

What are different Analytica editions

The Product Editions page on the Lumina Web Site covers the different Analytica editions, both the editions for model builders and the editions for model end-users. Those are the recommended pages to find this information.

Questions beyond what is covered in those pages appear here.

What are the differences between Analytica 32-bit and Analytica 64-bit?

The differences are basically:

The amount of memory that a model can make use of.
The operating systems they can run on
Computation speed.
Limitations on ODBC Database Access (With Office 2010, this difference no longer exists)

Analytica 32-bit is limited to a maximum of 2GB, 3GB or 4GB (depending on which operating system you have and your OS settings). Analytica 64-bit is limited by the amount of virtual memory that you have, up to about 128GB (the maximum 64-bit process size currently supported in Windows). Thus, in Analytica 64-bit, you are unlikely to encounter the dreaded "insufficient memory" error. However, even in Analytica 64-bit, speed of computation is dramatically impacted by the amount of RAM that you have. The more RAM you have, the more you'll benefit from Analytica 64-bit.

Analytica 64-bit requires a 64-bit Windows operation system. You can run Analytica 32-bit on Windows 64-bit, but you cannot run Analytica 64-bit on Windows 32-bit.

Analytica 64-bit runs everything about 25% faster. This is not unique to Analytica -- 64-bit applications tend to run about 25% faster than their 32-bit counterparts.

Prior to the release of Office 2010, it has been the case that 64-bit versions of the JET database drivers (for ODBC queries of Access, Excel, and Flat Files) existed. Without those, it was not possible to use ODBC to query those data sources. Now, as long as you install 64-bit Office 2010, this is no longer a limitation. Hence, that difference between 32-bit and 64-bit Analytica no longer exists.

What are the differences between ADE 32-bit and ADE 64-bit

This answer is the same as the previous question: The only fundamental difference is the amount of memory that a model can use in any single instantiation of ADE. Everything written in the previous response applies equally here.

In some applications of ADE, you may have multiple ADE instantiations, each running in its own process. Each 32-bit instance is subject to the maximum of 2GB, 3GB, or 4GB, but the total memory utilization is limited only by the amount of virtual memory. So if you have 10 ADE instances running, each of those using 2GB of memory, you can actually make use of 20 GB or memory even in Analytica 32-bit.

Multiple instantiations of ADE are utilized to parallelize computations (usually dividing scenarios among different processes), and also in Web applications where each user-session is assigned its own ADE instance.

Can ADE 32-bit and ADE 64-bit run side-by-side on the same server?

Yes. But, this raises the question of why you would want to?

To be honest, I cannot really think of any good reason for this, other than for Lumina's own QA staff who needs to perform quality assurance testing on both. Once you have ADE 64-bit, you'll probably just use ADE 64-bit.

You can use ADE 64-bit from a 32-bit application, as long as you use the ADE out-of-process server (which is what nearly everyone uses today anyway).

There is no conflict with having both installed, but it may become a bit more difficult for your application to launch the correct version. In C++, the CoCreateInstance function will accept a CLSCTX_ACTIVATE_32_BIT_SERVER or CLSCTX_ACTIVATE_64_BIT_SERVER to select this explicitly. In other languages, you might not have as much control.