SSRS has any page limit to render? - reporting-services

I have a dataset of 4 million records. Ideally a page should contain 40 rows maximum. So is it possible to generate 100000+ pages of data using ssrs?
For me I waited for 2 hours, still it is not generated. Can anyone say ssrs has any limit?

This is taken from the SSRS documentation
When you run a report, report size is equal to the amount of data that is returned in the report plus the size of the
output stream. Reporting Services does not impose a maximum limit on the size of a rendered report.System
memory determines the upper limit on size(by default,a report server uses all available configured memory when
rendering a report), but you can specify configuration settings to set memory thresholds and memory
management policies
However, I would question the usefulness of a report with 100,000+ pages. Who would look at it?

Related

SSRS performance Issue

I have a SSRS report. The related procedure is taking less time to execute but the report loading is taking too much time. The procedure is taking less than 20 seconds and the number of records is around 5,00,000. Here number of records is high and it causing issue to load the report. So How can I improve report performance or Is there any other reporting tool other than SSRS which is support MSSQL and .Net
There is execution time of the underlying query/proc, plus the calculation defined in the report plus the time to render the report. You can see the time takes for each part in ExecutionLogStorage table in [ReportingService] database on the server you installed your SSRS. Look for the columns [TimeDataRetrieval, [TimeProcessing] and [TimeRendering]. Then you can decide which part causes the slow. 500,000 may be too much to render in one page, you can set page size to show only very small portion of rows per page so the report will display quickly after you click run report, and you can click next page to show next portion (needs rendering).

Partial Data Set in WEBI 4.0

When I run a query in Web Intelligence, I only get a part of the data.
But I want to get all the data.
The resulting data set I am retrieving from database is quite large (10 million rows). However, I do not want to have 10 million rows in my reports, but to summarize it, so that the report has the most 50 rows.
Why am I getting only a partial data set as a result of WEBI query?
(I also noticed that in the bottom right corner there is an exclamation mark, that indicates I am working with partial data set, and when I click on refresh I still get the partial data set.)
BTW, I know I can see the SQL query when I built it using query editor, but can i see the corresponding query when I make a certain report? If yes, how?
UPDATE: I have tried the option by editing the 'Limit size of result set to:' in the Query Options in Business Layer by setting the value to 9 999 999 and the again by unchecking this option. However, I am still getting the partial result.
UPDATE: I have checked the number of rows in the resulting set - it is 9,6 million. Now it's even more confusing why I'm not getting all the rows (the max number of rows was set to 9 999 999)
SELECT
I_ATA_MV_FinanceTreasury.VWD_Segment_Value_A.Description_TXT,
count(I_ATA_MV_FinanceTreasury.VWD_Party_A.Party_KEY)
FROM
I_ATA_MV_FinanceTreasury.VWD_Segment_Value_A RIGHT OUTER JOIN
I_ATA_MV_FinanceTreasury.VWD_Party_A ON
(I_ATA_MV_FinanceTreasury.VWD_Segment_Value_A.Segment_Value_KEY=I_ATA_MV_FinanceTreasury.VWD_Party_A.Segment_Value_KEY)
GROUP BY 1
The "Limit size of result set" setting is a little misleading. You can choose an amount lower than the associated setting in the universe, but not higher. That is, if the universe is set to a limit of 5,000, you can set your report to a limit lower than 5,000, but you can't increase it.
Does your query include any measures? If not, and your query is set to retrieve duplicate rows, you will get an un-aggregated result.
If you're comfortable reading SQL, take a look at the report's generated SQL, and that might give you a clue as to what's going on. It's possible that there is a measure in the query that does not have an aggregate function (as it should).
While this may be a little off-topic, I personally would advise against loading that much data into a Web Intelligence document, especially if you're going to aggregate it to 50 rows in your report.
These are not the kind of data volumes WebI was designed to handle (regardless whether it will or not). Ideally, you should push down as much of the aggregation as possible to your database (which is much better equipped to handle such volumes) and return only the data you really need.
Have a look at this link, which contains some best practices. For example, slide 13 specifies that:
50.000 rows per document is a reasonable number
What you need to do is to add a measure to your query and make sure that this measure uses an aggregate database function (e.g. SUM()). This will cause WebI to create a SQL statement with GROUP BY.
Another alternative is to disable the option Retrieve duplicate rows. You can set this option by opening the data provider's properties.
.

Cube vs. Micro Cube in BusinessObjects

I am having problems understanding cubes and microcubes in BusinessObjects environment.
Although I have tried to find answers online, I did not find an answers that give overall explanations.
Beside description of the functionality, I would like to know where is cube and where is micro cube located: on server or in browser?
How many cubes/microcubes are there? One microcube per report or one micro cube per session, or sthg else?
Furthermore, can anyone explain the difference in aggregations on database level as opossed to aggregation on report level (when defining a measure, there are two possibilities - to define aggregation on report and/or aggregation level). Although there are some answers online, they are too general. Therefore, I would appreciate a simple explanation with an example.
And finaly, is it possible to color tables in data foundation layer? (since I have a lot of tables in a universe, it would be very helpful if I could color fact and dimensional tables).
It helps to understand the two-pass nature of querying traditional (non-OLAP) data in BO. When you refresh a report in BO, the report engine constructs a SQL statement based on the objects (results and conditions) that are specified in the query.
The SQL statement is sent to the database, and the report engine then retrieves the data that is returned from the database. This data becomes the microcube -- it is nothing more than a tabular representation of the data that was received from the database. If you could look at it visually, it would look identical to what you would get by running the SQL statement in a traditional SQL tool (such as TOAD or SQL*Plus).
The microcube then becomes the source for the report presentation. Your could, for example, create a table in a report by dragging in dimensions and measures from the object list. As you are dragging in these objects, the table will recalculate and redisplay as appropriate. This is all done by retrieving and calculating the data from the microcube, not from the source data. That is, as you are interacting with a report tab, you are not initiating a refresh from the database -- all of the calculation is done from the microcube.
For example, let's say you have created a new query with two dimensions (State, Region) and one measure (Sales). The SQL might look like this:
select state_nm,region_nm,sum(sales_amt)
from all_sales
group by state_nm,region_nm
Note that there is a sum() applied to sales_amt. This is causing the database to perform the initial aggregation on this field.
The microcube that is created after the refresh may look like:
AL North 30000
AL South 40000
AR North 5000
AR South 10000
Now you create a table in your report, and select just State and Sales. The report engine uses the data in the microcube to display the result:
AL 70000
AR 5000
In this case, the BO report engine has performed a sum() aggregation on Sales Amt. This is report-side aggregation.
Then you remove State. Again, the report engine aggregates the table from the microcube, not the database:
75000
The microcube is stored with the report file. If you are working with a WebI report via InfoView, then the microcube is loaded into the server's memory. When you save the report, a physical file is created on the server (with a .wid extension); the microcube is stored in that file. If you open the report again, the microcube is again loaded into the server's memory and is available for interaction.
If you are using Rich Client, then the same behavior applies, it's just using your workstation and local storage.
The term "cube" is generally used to describe data sources in an OLAP environment (SSAS or Essbase, for example). This is external to BO -- BO would be querying data from an OLAP cube.
Regarding the aggregation:
Database aggregation is performed by your RDBMS on the source data, before it is transferred to the client application (e.g. Web Intelligence). You can apply database aggregation by using a statement such as SUM() or COUNT() in the select statement of your measure (in the business layer of your universe). It only makes sense for measures objects, not dimensions.
Changes the data retrieved from the database
Can have a positive impact on performance due to a small dataset being returned
Leverages the database aggregate performance
.
Projection aggregation or report aggregation is the aggregation performed by the client application (e.g. Web Intelligence) after retrieving the data from the database, thus in-memory.
Happens on the fly as the dimensions change to which the measure is projected (hence projection aggregation)
The result set retrieved from the database remains the same
Regarding the table colours: have a look at the tutorial Apply color to tables that share the same information. This should show you how to configure the colours for the tables in the data foundation.

SSIS Balanced Data Distributor - Increase number of operations?

As per the attached, we have a Balanced Data Distributor set up in a data transformation covering about 2 million rows. The script tasks are identical - each one opens a connection to oracle and executes first a delete and then an insert. (This isn't relevant but it's done that way due to parameter issues with the Ole DB command and the Microsoft Ole DB provider for Oracle...)
The issue I'm running into is no matter how large I make my buffers or how many concurrent executions I configure, the BDD will not execute more than five concurrent processes at a time.
I've pulled back hundreds of thousands of rows in a larger buffer, and it just gets divided 5 ways. I've tried this on multiple machines - the current shot is from a 16 core server with -1 concurrent executions configured on the package - and no matter what, it's always 5 parallel jobs.
5 is better than 1, but with 2.5 million rows to insert/update, 15 rows per second at 5 concurrent executions isn't much better than 2-3 rows per second with 1 concurrent execution.
Can I force the BDD to use more paths, and if so how?
Short answer:
Yes BDD can make use of more than five paths. You shouldn't be doing anything special to force it, by definition it should automatically do it for you. Then why isn't it using more than 5 paths? Because your source is producing data faster than your destination can consume causing backpressure. To resolve it, you've to tune your destination components.
Long answer:
In theory, "the BDD takes input data and routes it in equal proportions to it's outputs, however many there are." In your set up, there are 10 outputs. So input data should be equally distributed to all the 10 outputs at the same time and you should see 10 paths executing at the same time - again in theory.
But another concept of BDD is "instead of routing individual rows, the BDD operates on buffers on data." Which means data flow engine initiates a buffer, fills it with as many rows as possible, and moves that buffer to the next component (script destination in your case). As you can see 5 buffers are used each with the same number of rows. If additional buffers were started, you'd have seen more paths being used. SSIS couldn't use additional buffers and ultimately additional paths because of a mechanism called backpressure; it happens when the source produces data faster than the destination can consume it. If it happens all memory would be used up by the source data and SSIS will not have any memory to use for the transformation and destination components. So to avoid it, SSIS limits the number of active buffers. It is set to 5 (can't be changed) which is exactly the number of threads you're seeing.
PS: The text within quotes is from this article
There is a property in SSIS data flow tasks called EngineThreads which determines how many flows can be run concurrently, and its default value is 5 (in SSIS 2012 its default value is 10, so I'm assuming you're using SSIS 2008 or earlier.) The optimal value is dependent on your environment, so some testing will probably be required to figure out what to put there.
Here's a Jamie Thomson article with a bit more detail.
Another interesting thing I've discovered via this article on CodeProject.
[T]his component uses an internal buffer of 9,947 rows (as per the
experiment, I found so) and it is pre-set. There is no way to override
this. As a proof, instead of 10 lac rows, we will use only 9,947 (Nine
thousand nine forty seven ) rows in our input file and will observe
the behavior. After running the package, we will find that all the
rows are being transferred to the first output component and the other
components received nothing.
Now let us increase the number of rows in our input file from 9,947 to
9,948 (Nine thousand nine forty eight). After running the package, we
find that the first output component received 9,947 rows while the
second output component received 1 row.
So I notice in your first buffer run that you pulled 50,000 records. Those got divided into 9,984 record buckets and passed to each output. So essentially the BDD takes the records it gets from the buffer and passes them out in ~10,000 record increments to each output. So in this case perhaps your source is the bottleneck.
Perhaps you'll need to split your original Source query in half and create two BDD-driven data flows to in essence double your parallel throughput.

SSRS Performance

I Have created an SSRS Report for retrieving 55000 records using a Stored Procedure. When
executing from the Stored Proc it is taking just 3 seconds but when executing from SSRS report it is taking more than one minute. How can I solve this problem?
The additional time could be due to Reporting Services rendering the report in addition to querying the data. For example if you have 55,000 rows returned for the report and the report server then has to group, sort and/or filter those rows to render the report then that could take additional time.
I would have a look at the way the data is being grouped and filtered in the report, then review your stored procedure to see if you could offload some of that processing to the SQL code, maybe using some parameters. Try and aim to reduce the the amount of rows returned to the report to be the minimum needed to render the report and preferably try to avoid doing the grouping and filtering in the report itself.
I had such problem because of parameters sniffing in my SP. In SQL Management Studio when I run my SP, I recreated it with new execution plan (and call was very fast), but my reports used old bad plan (for another sequence of parameters) and load time was much longer than in SQL MS.
in the ReportServerDB you will find a table called ExecutionLog. you got to look up the catalog id of your report and check the latest execution instance. this can tell you the break-up of the times taken - for data retrieval, for processing, for rendering etc.
Use the SSRS Performance Dashboard reports to debug your issues.
Archaic question but because things like that are kinda recurring, my "quick and dirty" solution to improve SSRS, which works perfectly on large enterprise environments (I am rendering reports that can have up to 100.000+ lines daily) is to properly set the InteractiveSize of the page (for example, setting it to A4 size -21 cm ). When InteractiveSize is set to 0, then all results are going to be rendered as single page and this literally kills the performance of SSRS. In cases like that, queries that can take a few seconds on your DB can take forever to render (or cause an out of memory exception unless you have tons of redundant H/W on your SSRS server).
So, in cases of queries/ SP's that execute reasonably fast on direct call and retrieve large number of rows, set InteractiveSize and you won't need to bother with other, more sophisticated solutions.
I had a similar problem: a query that returns 4,000 rows and runs in 1 second on it's own was taking so long in SSRS that it timed out.
It turned out that the issue was caused by the way SSRS was handling a multi-valued parameter. Interestingly, if the user selected multiple values, the report rendered quickly (~1 second), but if only a single value was selected, the report took several minutes to render.
Here is the original query that was taking more than 100x longer to render than it should:
SELECT ...
FROM ...
WHERE filename IN (#file);
-- #file is an SSRS multi-value parameter passed directly to the query
I suspect the issue was that SSRS was bringing in the entire source table (over 1 million rows) and then performing a client-side filter.
To fix this, I ended up passing the parameter into the query through an expression, so that I could control the filter myself. That is, in the "DataSet Properties" window, on the "Parameters" screen, I replaced the parameter value with this expression:
=JOIN(Parameters!file.Value,",")
... (I also gave the result a new name: filelist) and then I updated the query to look like this:
SELECT ...
FROM ...
WHERE ',' + #filelist + ',' LIKE '%,' + FILENAME + ',%';
-- #filelist is passed to the query as the following expression:
-- =JOIN(Parameters!file.Value,",")
I would guess that moving the query to a stored procedure would also be an effective way to alleviate the problem (because SSRS basically does the same JOIN before passing a multi-value parameter to a stored procedure). But in my case it was a little simpler to handle it all within the report.
Finally, I should note that the LIKE operator is maybe not the most efficient way to filter on a list of items, but it's certainly much simpler to code than a split-string approach, and the report now runs in about a second, so splitting the string didn't seem worth the extra effort.
Obviously getting the report running correctly (i.e. taking the same order of magnitude of time to select the data as SSMS) would be preferable but as a work around, would your report support execution snapshots (i.e. no parameters, or parameter defaults stored in the report)?
This will allow a scheduled snapshot of the data to be retrieved and stored beforehand, meaning SSRS only needs to process and render the report when the user opens it. Should reduce the wait down to a few seconds (depending on what processing the report requires. YMMV, test to see if you get a performance improvement).
Go to the report's properties tab in Report manager, select Execution, change to Render this report from a report execution snapshot, specify your schedule.
The primary solution to speeding SSRS reports is to cache the reports. If one does this (either my preloading the cache at 7:30 am for instance) or caches the reports on-hit, one will find massive gains in load speed.
Please note that I do this daily and professionally and am not simply waxing poetic on SSRS
Caching in SSRS
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms155927.aspx
Pre-loading the Cache
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms155876.aspx
If you do not like initial reports taking long and your data is static i.e. a daily general ledger or the like, meaning the data is relatively static over the day, you may increase the cache life-span.
Finally, you may also opt for business managers to instead receive these reports via email subscriptions, which will send them a point in time Excel report which they may find easier and more systematic.
You can also use parameters in SSRS to allow for easy parsing by the user and faster queries. In the query builder type IN(#SSN) under the Filter column that you wish to parameterize, you will then find it created in the parameter folder just above data sources in the upper left of your BIDS GUI.
[If you do not see the data source section in SSRS, hit CTRL+ALT+D.
See a nearly identical question here: Performance Issuses with SSRS
Few things can be done to improve the performance of the report which are as below:
1. Enable caching on the report manager and set a time period to refresh the cache.
2. Apply indexing on all the backend database tables that are used as a source in the report, although your stored procedure is already taking very less time in rendering the data but still applying indexing can further improve the performance at the backend level.
3. Use shared datasets instead of using embedded datasets in the report and apply caching on all these datasets as well.
4. If possible, set the parameters to load default values.
5. Try to reduce the data that is selected by the stored procedure, e.g. if the report contains historical data which is of no use, a filter can be added to exclude that data.
I experienced the same issue. Query ran in SQL just fine but was slow as anything in SSRS. Are you using an SSRS parameter in your dataset? I've found that if you use the report parameter directly in certain queries, there is a huge performance hit.
Instead, if you have a report parameter called #reportParam, in the dataset, simply do the following:
declare #reportParamLocal int
set #reportParamLocal = #reportParam
select * from Table A where A.field = #reportParam
It's a little strange. I don't quite know why it works but it does for me.
One quick thing you may want to look at is whether elements on your report could be slowing down the execution.
For example i have found massive execution time differences when converting between dateTimes. Do any elements on report use the CDate function? If so you may want to consider doing your formatting at the sql level.
Conversions in general can cause a massive slow down so take the time to look into your dataset and see what may be the problem.
This is a bit of a mix of the answers above, but do your best to get the data back from your stored procedure in the simplest and most finished format. I do all my sorting, grouping and filtering up on the server. The server is built for this and I just let reporting services do the pretty display work.
I had the same issue ... it was indeed the rendering time but more specifically, it was because of the SORT being in SSRS. Try moving your sort to the stored procedure and removing any SORT from the SSRS report. On 55K rows, this will improve it dramatically.
Further to #RomanBadiornyi's answer, try adding
OPTION (RECOMPILE)
to the end of your main query in the stored procedure.
This will ensure the query is recompiled for different parameters each time, in case different parameters need a different execution plan.