Performance Tuning Guide - EMC Community Network

Designing Reports
Updating business data (SDTs and package objects)
SDT and package object attributes can be aggregated and used as base entities in BAM reports.
In contrast, simple process variables cannot be aggregated and must be nested under a Process
Execution report entity. SDT and package object attributes can be updated in the BAM database when
there are changes. The update operation creates or modifies report entities and BAM database tables,
and can have a performance impact during the update operation.
Designing high performance reports
Design dashboards and reports to display necessary information only. The more data displayed in
BAM reports, the greater the demand on system resources.
Note: For high volume environments with greater than a few hundred records, use Crystal Reports.
For low volumes of process data consisting of a few hundred aggregated rows, use simple (PRS)
reports.
Defining report entities and filters
The entities specified in your reports define the queries run against the BAM database. The query
results comprise the report data. The larger the result set returned by the report queries, the greater
the utilization of system resources and potential impact to performance. Use the following guidelines
to minimize the size of your query results:
• Configure BAM to restrict the number of results returned in a report (Modifying the number
of records returned in a results set, page 61).
• Use filters to restrict the result set to the rows matching the filter condition. For example, when
the "Last Day" filter is used in a report, only a fraction of the data is queried and returned.
Another example similar in its benefit is the user/role wildcard filter, which only displays the
data related to the user viewing the report.
Note: Avoid creating complicated filter expressions. Every condition in the filter expression adds
complexity to the query, which slows down query performance.
Note: Custom filters for SDT and activity package data can require creation of additional database
indexes (Indexing the database, page 86).
• Configure initial/default filters to display reports with a predefined filter.
• Use mandatory filters to prevent reports with large volumes of data from displaying in the
dashboard.
• Configure reports to drill into other reports. Each report applies its own filters, which reduce the
volume of data processed by any one report.
Note: Dashboard (runtime) filters are executed in-memory, not in the database query, and are
less effective than PRS (design time) filters.
• Minimize the number of columns reported on for each entity.
60 EMC Documentum xCP 1.0 Performance Tuning Guide