Reports Pushed to Cusotmers

[TekFredric]

Relative newbie to Mstr, assigned task of optimizing canned reports delivery to customers using web access. Trying to avoid load on DB server, and regulate report execution concurrency. 3-Tier architecture. Teradata DB, Win2K middle tier and clients.

I'm wrestling with devising the best method to schedule reports (daily, weekly, etc) which would run against the db in off hours, placing results in cache on middle tier and/or pushing results to specific customers, who access their reports thru web interface.

Customers need to see/use the latest report, but not go thru to the db. How do I control this ?

Can I push these reports directly to their history folder ? or must I go thru the subscribe/execute/save-to-history steps ? If so can these steps be automated, and can I hide the subriptions folder from the user ?

Thanks in advance for your attention,
FC @ Ryder Miami

 

[nlim]

it's good to save money on the TD box
the strategy you choose will depend on

- how many users?
- how many reports per user
- do you have user security implemented.
- when is your warehouse refreshed
- obviously the window to runs schedules

the simplest scenario is to schedule all the reports for the entire user base. I would not recommend using history list. Just generic caching should work fine. Kick off the event after the warehouse load.

It would also help to look at your reports and figure out when the data refreshes. That way you can schedule some daily, some weekly. To do that I think you need to do a dependency check to find which tables are being used for the reports.

good luck.

 

[TekFredric]

Nlim, Thanks for your response.
There are 40 reports, being delivered to various combinations of users, but never more than 10 customers per report. We are not interested in the NarrowCast solution at this time.

We do have Mstr security implemented, as well as ETL based application level security, which specifies which rows can be seen by which customer.

And, we're clear on the report dependencies, and have our reports scheduled to kick off once the Warehouse loads have completed. (as appropriate)

What I'm still not clear about is ...

How do I ensure that the autoscheduled reports run against the DB every time they run ? (not against cache)

How do I ensure that when customers view reports, that they never execute against the DB ? (always use cache instead)

How can I deliver to the user, in such a way as to make this viewing of reports 'dead simple' ? (fewest clicks required by user, and least amount of on-screen options)

And finally, which EM reports or other Mstr tools, will allow me to prove that the above is working properly ?

Thanks for your time,
Fred C.
fcooper@ryder.com

 

[nlim]

1 delete the appropriate caches first (you can schedule this as well), then autoscheduce report refresh update
2 disable web and desktop privilege "reexecute report against warehouse"
3 turn off all the web privileges except for "web user"
4 check dbms log to see if any mstr reports are run during the day. See if users email you and say they can't get the reports