13 February, 2014

How Do I Improve Report Processing Performance?

Each user wants to view the report without waiting for a long time. But each report has to go through three processing phases. Once the required data are retrieved, the report is processed, and then displayed to the viewers. So the processing time required to deliver a report can increase due to problem in each processing phase. However, you have several options to monitor the performance of a reporting sever. Also, you can consider some simple yet effective ways to improve the report processing performance.

Six Effective Ways to Optimize Report Processing Performance

1) Use Selection Formulas
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You can always use a selection formula to retrieve the specific records, required to create a report, from a large database. The formula will further prevent the report processing system from reading all records in the database. However, you must remember that the Crystal functions are not understood by the database. So you must not refer to any Crystal functions or report formulas to prevent the database from returning all records. Instead of using selection formulas, you can use Crystal function in specific formulas.

2) Opt for Conditional Visibility
The report processor can further make more relevant information visible first by conditional visibility of items. You can use the sorting, grouping and filtering expressions to make the items visible conditionally. However, the SQL Server Reporting Services allow users to process only the visible data. However, you must allow users to see detailed data by drilling down. It is also important to choose the conditional visibility according to the type and purpose of the report.

3) Suppress the Sections that You Want to Hide
There are always chances that you will want to hide certain sections of the report. If you want to hide the sections, it is advisable to try to suppress the sections by removing drill-down options. However, you have to decide if you want to provide drill-down information to the end users before suppressing these sections. Once you suppress the sections, the amount of time required to calculate and save the drill-down information will be saved. Thus, the suppression of these sections will increase the report processing speed.

4) Reduce the Number of Unlinked Sub-reports
Often sub-reports are generated to explain various aspects of the main report in detail. But each sub-report will fetch information from the database repeatedly. Thus, the sub-reports often affect the report processing performance. The linked sub-reports are generated by using the subset of data retrieved by the main report. So the linked sub-reports do not affect the report processing performance significantly. You can improve the report processing performance by reducing the number of unlinked sub-reports.

5) Provide Adequate Free Hard Drive Space
You can further optimize the report processing performance by providing keeping adequate hard drive space free. It is also a good idea to point the hard drive with enough free space through the “SET TEMP=” statement in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. The path is used by report generators to store the swap files required to render the report. So the free space on the hard drive will facilitate the generation of you reports.

6) Use Native Database Drivers
Most report processors allow users to retrieve data stored on multiple databases. But the amount of time required by the report generator to retrieve information will vary according to the nature of the data source. Normally, the native data drivers, in comparison to ODBC drivers, allow the system to access and retrieve data at a quicker pace. Further, the information passing through the ODBC driver needs to be translated by it to generate the report. So you can always use native database drivers to optimize the report processing speed.

It is also a good idea to analyze the report execution log data to identify the factors affecting the report processing performance. Based on the information, you can optimize your report management system to render reports to users without any delay.

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