CRYSTAL TIME:Light The solution for faster BATCH report execution with consistent data

1. CRYSTAL TIME:LightThe solution for faster BATCH report execution with consistent data January 2018 Confidential – this material may only be shared with explicit authorisation of Crystal Computing

2. Problem Statement – Batch Report Execution The Business Problem Consistent Data - It is often a requirement to be able to execute multiple reports from a consistent data set (usually based on the previous day) to ensure reporting integrity when producing various reporting packs. Performance - Your overnight batch is taking too long - partly due to the individual report execution time and partly because of the high number of executions of these reports. The Technical Problem • Reports are real-time, so multiple reports or batch executions could produce different results as the underlying data changes due to user activity. For example, a Divisional summary report might provide a different picture to an underlying Business Unit summary report because the data changed in the few minutes between execution of each of the reports. • You have optimised your reports but they are still too slow. The slowest part of OpenPages reports in Cognos is often the application of the OpenPages security model but you have no way to avoid this overhead even if your BATCH job is running in the context of a user with full data access.

3. Crystal TIME:Light Solution The Static Data Layer In order to run reports with consistent data there must be a data layer that contains the OpenPages data at the end of day. This data remains static throughout the day whilst the batch reporting jobs execute. Crystal TIME:Light provides this data snapshot each night. Further more, TIME:Light can easily reconfigure itself whenever your underlying OpenPages schema changes i.e. when you add new fields / objects / relationships to your system. This provides the customer with a maintenance free data layer solution. OpenPages Security The slowest part of OpenPages reports in Cognos is often the application of the OpenPages security model but you have no way to avoid this overhead even if your BATCH job is running in the context of an OpenPages user with full data access. Crystal TIME:Light effectively disables OpenPages Security checks for reports that you choose to configure to execute using the TIME:Light system. In technical terms, the SQL that the report executes on your database is simplified and can execute faster.

4. Crystal TIME:Light Solution The Reporting Layer In order for Cognos reports to use the snapshot data layer, a Cognos reporting framework must connect be used. Crystal TIME:Light provides a method to ‘copy’ the automated Cognos OpenPages reporting framework and re-point it to the data snapshot produced by the TIME:Light module. Most existing* reports can also be simply re-configured to use TIME:Light and with ZERO changes to the report. All that is required is to change the framework the report uses from the OpenPages V6 framework to the ‘copy’ published by the TIME:Light system. This can be performed by either report developers or your Cognos Administrators. * Some OpenPages Report Authoring functions may not be available in TIME:Light without additional development work.

5. Crystal TIME:Light Results The Results Reports can run against stable data throughout the day (using last nights data snapshot) meaning different report or pack executions are all consistent with each other. At one client, improvements of up to 90% have been measured - with the most complex reports gaining the largest improvement (and these were reports that had already seen a considerable developer effort to optimise them). Appropriate controls on the distribution for the report output are required. It is likely that these controls are already in place for appropriately handling the distribution of batch report output.

6. Next Steps For more information, contact Crystal Computing Solutions Ltd: Info@ccsl.uk.com