Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 1 Scaling Large HTML Reports With Active Cache Mark Nesson,Vashti Ragoonath June 2008

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 2 Scaling Large HTML Reports With Active Cache Overview  An extension of Active Reports  Overview of Active Reports  Self-contained Application as a single HTML file  Packages the data and the data sets  No software or browser plug-ins required  No back-end calls to Reporting Server  Can create numerous reports without rerunning the query. Analytics built into the report.  High Compression  Online implementation as of Release – Active Cache

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 3 Scaling Large HTML Reports With Active Cache Benefits of Active Reports  User can perform most commonly used EXCEL functions  Slice and dice the data and share with others  e.g Telephone Bill  Can sort and recalculate  Change the report around as desired  Generate many reports from single Active Report  24/7 report availability  e.g Banks sometimes bring down their systems for maintenance and reports are inaccessible. Not so with Active Reports.

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 4 Scaling Large HTML Reports With Active Cache Benefits of Active Reports  Cost effective  If you users an EXCEL file, they need MS EXCEL to view it. With Active Reports, no EXCEL required.  Less load on back-end systems  Reduced Administrative expenses all around  Less load on Middle Tier, Database Servers  Portable device –having to go back to the server for a different view of the report subtracts from your data plan and charges for bytes of data transferred.

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 5 Scaling large HTML reports with Active Cache Methods of creating an HTML Report  There are many ways to generate an HTML Report  Traditional HTML  No manipulation of data in report  ON DEMAND PAGING  Page Navigation  No other manipulation of data in report  ACTIVE REPORT – Offline  Page Navigation  Host of other EXCEL type functions  ACTIVE REPORT – Cache  All Active Reports functionality  Process large amounts of data without being subject to browser limitations and memory requirements.

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 6 Scaling large HTML reports with Active Cache Methods of creating an HTML Report Let’s take a look at each of these methods of generating an HTML report with this request:  Traditional HTML  TABLE FILE GGSALES  PRINT *  ON TABLE PCHOLD FORMAT HTML  END

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 7 Scaling large HTML reports with Active Cache Methods of creating an HTML Report Let’s take a look at each of these methods of generating an HTML report with this request:  On Demand Paging  TABLE FILE GGSALES  PRINT *  ON TABLE SET WEBVIEWER ON  ON TABLE PCHOLD FORMAT HTML  END

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 8 Scaling large HTML reports with Active Cache Methods of creating an HTML Report Let’s take a look at each of these methods of generating an HTML report with this request:  Active Report – Offline Mode  TABLE FILE GGSALES  PRINT *  ON TABLE PCHOLD FORMAT AHTML  END In this demo, will make user customizations:  Add comment, sort and filter on a column  Save and .

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 9 Scaling large HTML reports with Active Cache Active Reports Modes  Now let’s talk about an Active Cache report  We can run an Active Report in two modes:  Offline or disconnected  Connected or Active Cache  Active Reports Offline  Data and Data Sets are packaged in single HTML file  No backend calls to Reporting Server  Subject to browser limitations with java script  Active Cache  Data and Data Sets are cached on Reporting Server  Never go back to original data source, only the cache  Specify number of pages to send to browser at a time  Handle large volumes of data Let’s run an Active Cache report now

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 10 Scaling large HTML reports with Active Cache Active Cache Report Run the same report as we did before – except now it’s in Active Cache mode:  SET WEBVIEWER = ON  TABLE FILE GGSALES  PRINT *  ON TABLE PCHOLD FORMAT AHTML  END Do you see the difference in Offline and Cache mode? In this demo, will make user customizations:  Add comment, sort and filter on a column  Save and .

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 11 Scaling large HTML reports with Active Cache Active Cache Report  Demo of Active Cache  Create an Active Dashboard with combination of graphs and tabular reports.  Create graphs in Offline mode since we have less records.  Tabular reports in Active Cache mode since we have a fairly large number of data  Show how to use SET CACHELINES to specify number of pages sent to browser.  Export the data to another application

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 12 Scaling large HTML reports with Active Cache Scaling with Active Reports  A new twist to scaling  Imagine being able to deliver thousands of compressed Active Reports to your end-users without any load on the middle tier or back-end?  That’s what some of the big telephone and credit card companies are doing with Active Reports.  Compress the Active Report with the ZIP option of ReportCaster and distribute Active Reports to thousands of telephone users via or to Report Library.  That’s a new twist to scalability! You maintain the performance of your system and you meet all your SLA’s!

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 13 Scaling large HTML reports with Active Cache Conclusion  Questions and Comments.