Active Report Performance Norms in Cognos 11

[pacificbeavs]

I have an active report that displays three visualizations (pie, stacked bar, and Bubble), and it's 3,100 KBs in size.  The data it summarizes consists of roughly 80,000 records, and the visualizations bucket them differently.

The pie is the only clickable visualization, and it filters the stacked bar and the bubble.  I also added a "Show All" button that sets the variable to empty, which unfilters the visualizations.

Execution Statistics:

Running in Cognos: 1 minute
Opening the .MHT file in Browser: 7 seconds
Clicking the pie slice and filtering all visualizations: 1.5 seconds
Clicking "Show All" button to unfilter results: 4 seconds


This report is saved as an .MHT, and made available for the company.  My biggest concern is the bolded items above, since those have the biggest impact on end-users.  Should those 1.5 seconds and 4 seconds be instantaneous, or is that lag normal?

[MFGF]

I have an active report that displays three visualizations (pie, stacked bar, and Bubble), and it's 3,100 KBs in size.  The data it summarizes consists of roughly 80,000 records, and the visualizations bucket them differently.

The pie is the only clickable visualization, and it filters the stacked bar and the bubble.  I also added a "Show All" button that sets the variable to empty, which unfilters the visualizations.

Execution Statistics:

Running in Cognos: 1 minute
Opening the .MHT file in Browser: 7 seconds
Clicking the pie slice and filtering all visualizations: 1.5 seconds
Clicking "Show All" button to unfilter results: 4 seconds


This report is saved as an .MHT, and made available for the company.  My biggest concern is the bolded items above, since those have the biggest impact on end-users.  Should those 1.5 seconds and 4 seconds be instantaneous, or is that lag normal?

Hi,

Is 80,000 the number of rows loaded into the data set in the report output, or are the 80,000 summarised into a smaller set within the report? The normal maximum is set at 5000 rows for an active report. When running the report, if you go into Debug mode (you can toggle it on/off with <ctrl><shift>D) what do you see as the Maximum Instantiated Rows?

If there really are 80,000 rows in the record set in the output, this is probably the cause of the performance issues you are seeing. Your browser has to run scripts to filter the data interactively, and it's likely this that is taking the time.

As I see it there are two alternatives:

1. Summarise the result set to reduce the number of rows
2. Instead of filtering within your report output, use a data deck so that the stacked bar and bubble visualizations are pre-rendered on cards, and you are simply selecting a different card when clicking on the pie. You can add a Default Card to the deck with stacked bar and bubble visualizations showing results for all data, and this should appear when you unset the variable.

Cheers!

MF.

[pacificbeavs]

Hi,

Is 80,000 the number of rows loaded into the data set in the report output, or are the 80,000 summarised into a smaller set within the report? The normal maximum is set at 5000 rows for an active report. When running the report, if you go into Debug mode (you can toggle it on/off with <ctrl><shift>D) what do you see as the Maximum Instantiated Rows?

If there really are 80,000 rows in the record set in the output, this is probably the cause of the performance issues you are seeing. Your browser has to run scripts to filter the data interactively, and it's likely this that is taking the time.

As I see it there are two alternatives:

1. Summarise the result set to reduce the number of rows
2. Instead of filtering within your report output, use a data deck so that the stacked bar and bubble visualizations are pre-rendered on cards, and you are simply selecting a different card when clicking on the pie. You can add a Default Card to the deck with stacked bar and bubble visualizations showing results for all data, and this should appear when you unset the variable.

Cheers!

MF.

Hi MF,

The 80,000 records are summarized into the visualizations, so they don't show in the report.  I did the debug mode- and there are 0 maximum instantiated rows.  The only other number of relevance might be the Client Visualization Data Set 1712.

I'm still pretty new to this, so maybe that lag is just normal, or perhaps it's more related to our back end servers.

Given that, does that change your suggestions?  Or would data decks still be a viable option?

Thanks!

Wade

[MFGF]

Hi MF,

The 80,000 records are summarized into the visualizations, so they don't show in the report.  I did the debug mode- and there are 0 maximum instantiated rows.  The only other number of relevance might be the Client Visualization Data Set 1712.

I'm still pretty new to this, so maybe that lag is just normal, or perhaps it's more related to our back end servers.

Given that, does that change your suggestions?  Or would data decks still be a viable option?

Thanks!

Wade

Hi,

You need to press the "Create All Recordsets" button at the bottom of the Info window to generate the Maximum Instantiated Rows count, otherwise it will be zero. This will tell us what size your data set in the output is.

The lag when using the saved MHT file is almost certainly down to client-side rendering, so it would have nothing to do with your back-end servers.

Are you consuming the report output in the Cognos portal or are you taking the rendered MHT file out of Cognos and launching it from the file system? If the latter, what version of Internet Explorer are you using? I remember seeing some horrid performance in IE9...

MF.

[pacificbeavs]

Hi,

You need to press the "Create All Recordsets" button at the bottom of the Info window to generate the Maximum Instantiated Rows count, otherwise it will be zero. This will tell us what size your data set in the output is.

The lag when using the saved MHT file is almost certainly down to client-side rendering, so it would have nothing to do with your back-end servers.

Are you consuming the report output in the Cognos portal or are you taking the rendered MHT file out of Cognos and launching it from the file system? If the latter, what version of Internet Explorer are you using? I remember seeing some horrid performance in IE9...

MF.

Hi,

When I hit "Create All Recordsets", the "Recordset Instances" changes to 1, however the "Maximum Instantiated Rows" stays at 0, possibly because I have three visualizations and one singleton at the top of the page (and no actual rows of data)?  I added a list to the report for testing purposes, and the "Maximum Instantiated Rows" updated with a bigger number, so I believe I'm doing it correctly.

Both- Running it through the portal, and saved off as an MHT appear to have the same slight lag.  I'm using IE 11.  And again the lag isn't horrible, but it's just not instantaneous like some folks were expecting.

Thanks for looking in to this!