Ho to make data source web method execute once per a report?

My report works with XMLDP data provider and obtains source data as a

result of a web method call. This memthod returns all data necessary

for the report. Thus, all of about 20 report datasets query the same

web method with the same parameters and then select appropriate data

with different ElementPath expressions. It's so inefficient and

time-consuming! I cant have respective web method for every dataset.

How can I configure SSRS to call web method only once while the report

is executing? Or how can I leverage the performance at all?I seem to have founed the solution. I've configured report datasource to execute in single transaction and extra marked the source web method with [WebMethod(CashDuration=%TIME)] attribute. Hence, the report datasets call the web method one after another and the method is actually executed only once if %TIME value is more than report processing time. That's what I need!

Ho to make data source web method execute once per a report?

My report works with XMLDP data provider and obtains source data as a

result of a web method call. This memthod returns all data necessary

for the report. Thus, all of about 20 report datasets query the same

web method with the same parameters and then select appropriate data

with different ElementPath expressions. It's so inefficient and

time-consuming! I cant have respective web method for every dataset.

How can I configure SSRS to call web method only once while the report

is executing? Or how can I leverage the performance at all?I seem to have founed the solution. I've configured report datasource to execute in single transaction and extra marked the source web method with [WebMethod(CashDuration=%TIME)] attribute. Hence, the report datasets call the web method one after another and the method is actually executed only once if %TIME value is more than report processing time. That's what I need!

High CPU Usage SSIS Package

Anyone aware of anything I can look at to improve performance of my SSIS packages? i basically have two master packages that call about 15 child package tasks each. All the package tasks are called sequentially and all they do is just load flat files into temporary tables and execute a simple stored proc. Each package tasks check to see if a file is there and if so it processes it else it just ends. The packages are scheduled to run every minute to check for files. If I watch the CPU during execution i can see the two instances of DTSEXEC.exe running and consuming about 25-30% of the CPU. The box that this runs on is a Quad processor with 4 GB of ram.

Any ideas on how to improve the performance of this? I have tried playing with the transaction level, but that didn't seem to do much performance wise.

Thanks for the help!

I thoroughly recommend you digest this SSSI Performance Whitepaper: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/ssisperf.mspx. Its a really interesting read and has some great tips on performance tuning.

Understanding how SSIS processes data is half the battle and this paper really helps towards this.

What performance problems are you having? As ever, performance tuning is all about identifying where your bottlenecks are.

-Jamie

|||

Yeah I browsed through that whitepaper and didn't see anything that triggered me for this situation.

Basically my setup is the following...

There is a directory that contains data that an AS/400 sends over via FTP. So for a customer change there is a file called customer.txt. Then there is an SSIS package that checks if that file exists, if so it processes it, if not it just ends (used a precendence constraint). There are probably 30 different files that get put into the FTP directory. So there are two master packages and each one calls about 15 child packages that do just as the package I described above. Most of the time there aren't very many files there so most of the packages fire up, see there isnt' a file there and end. Seems like the bottleneck is in the packages spinning up as once it gets going it seems like it goes pretty fast. I just don't understand how checking for a file can take up that much CPU. Are there other strategies for implementing the kind of architecture we have?

Thanks!

|||

OK, well you're right that there is an overhead to executing packages. Witness: http://blogs.conchango.com/jamiethomson/archive/2005/03/01/1100.aspx

(But caveat those observations with what I've said here: http://blogs.conchango.com/jamiethomson/archive/2005/03/02/1107.aspx)

Basically, if you can reduce the number of packages that have to be executed that would be very beneficial. That would be my strategy anyway. Is there a reason that everything can't happen within 1 package?

Interested to know how you progress with this.

-Jamie

|||

Those are some interesting findings that you have there.

I could implement most of these in one package and skip the child packages. The reason for having them is for versioning and concurrent development. Now that we are pretty much done with developing these I could probably transform this into one package that doesn't use any child packages.

So any thoughts on the best way to implement this into one package then? Wondering if I can have a config file that has all the file names to check for and based on that perform the appropriate transformation which is nothing more than trimming off the spaces, loading it into a temp table and executing a stored proc that update the master table.

Seems kind of ridiculous that loading these child packages takes that much overhead, but I guess I can see that.

|||

Yeah, the overhead of spinning up the packages is only really a problem if its proportion of total package execution time is large. In other words, if you aint doing much, don't try and put everything into seperate packages.

I would recommend using sequence containers to logically seperate your processing in the control-flow. So, where you had a child package before, you now have a sequence container. These can of course run in parallel. And also, only execute those "stuff" for which a file exists - I'm sure you've already gone down that road already anyway.

-Jamie

|||Maybe what I shoudl try first is to put the check if the file exists in the master package and not in the child package. That way it will have to spin up a lot fewer packages.|||

Stark77 wrote:

Maybe what I shoudl try first is to put the check if the file exists in the master package and not in the child package. That way it will have to spin up a lot fewer packages.

Yep, another good idea. Although if you do that your child packages will be (correct me if I'm wrong) only loading up a file and executing a sproc on the data. Such a small amount of work doesn't really justify moving it out into another package.

-Jamie

|||

Ha...finally getting around to doing this. You have any best practices on doing something like this?

Basically here is what I am doing. We get about 30-40 different files in an ftp directory and when they arrive we need to process them. Each file has a different layout. Basically we grab the file, load it to a temp table that matches the file layout and then fire a stored procedure to process the records in the temp table. At the end we delete the file if it was processed successfully. We process the files in a specific order (orderheader, then orderdetail, shipmentheader, shipmentdetail, etc). The only other task we do is to trim all the string variables.

Basically I am wondering the best way to lay this out or if there is a best practice for processing something like this. I thought about looping through all the .txt files in the directory, but that won't process them in the order I want.

Thanks for the help!

|||

I use a table in a management db that contains the files. This way you have utmost control. In addition you can use it to log failures against the files, processing history etc.

You can improve the overhead time a package has by delaying validation on tasks/components. This way the validation only occurs when needed.

|||

Any chance you can script me out your table you use so I can brain storm off of it? Not really following what you are suggesting. How does the package flow out then? Do you have a for each that reads that table? Would be cool to send me over that table and a screenshot of the package or the package itself.

Thanks for the input. I am definitely going to throw an article together once I get this one done.

High CPU Usage SSIS Package

Anyone aware of anything I can look at to improve performance of my SSIS packages? i basically have two master packages that call about 15 child package tasks each. All the package tasks are called sequentially and all they do is just load flat files into temporary tables and execute a simple stored proc. Each package tasks check to see if a file is there and if so it processes it else it just ends. The packages are scheduled to run every minute to check for files. If I watch the CPU during execution i can see the two instances of DTSEXEC.exe running and consuming about 25-30% of the CPU. The box that this runs on is a Quad processor with 4 GB of ram.

Any ideas on how to improve the performance of this? I have tried playing with the transaction level, but that didn't seem to do much performance wise.

Thanks for the help!

I thoroughly recommend you digest this SSSI Performance Whitepaper: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/ssisperf.mspx. Its a really interesting read and has some great tips on performance tuning.

Understanding how SSIS processes data is half the battle and this paper really helps towards this.

What performance problems are you having? As ever, performance tuning is all about identifying where your bottlenecks are.

-Jamie

|||

Yeah I browsed through that whitepaper and didn't see anything that triggered me for this situation.

Basically my setup is the following...

There is a directory that contains data that an AS/400 sends over via FTP. So for a customer change there is a file called customer.txt. Then there is an SSIS package that checks if that file exists, if so it processes it, if not it just ends (used a precendence constraint). There are probably 30 different files that get put into the FTP directory. So there are two master packages and each one calls about 15 child packages that do just as the package I described above. Most of the time there aren't very many files there so most of the packages fire up, see there isnt' a file there and end. Seems like the bottleneck is in the packages spinning up as once it gets going it seems like it goes pretty fast. I just don't understand how checking for a file can take up that much CPU. Are there other strategies for implementing the kind of architecture we have?

Thanks!

|||

OK, well you're right that there is an overhead to executing packages. Witness: http://blogs.conchango.com/jamiethomson/archive/2005/03/01/1100.aspx

(But caveat those observations with what I've said here: http://blogs.conchango.com/jamiethomson/archive/2005/03/02/1107.aspx)

Basically, if you can reduce the number of packages that have to be executed that would be very beneficial. That would be my strategy anyway. Is there a reason that everything can't happen within 1 package?

Interested to know how you progress with this.

-Jamie

|||

Those are some interesting findings that you have there.

I could implement most of these in one package and skip the child packages. The reason for having them is for versioning and concurrent development. Now that we are pretty much done with developing these I could probably transform this into one package that doesn't use any child packages.

So any thoughts on the best way to implement this into one package then? Wondering if I can have a config file that has all the file names to check for and based on that perform the appropriate transformation which is nothing more than trimming off the spaces, loading it into a temp table and executing a stored proc that update the master table.

Seems kind of ridiculous that loading these child packages takes that much overhead, but I guess I can see that.

|||

Yeah, the overhead of spinning up the packages is only really a problem if its proportion of total package execution time is large. In other words, if you aint doing much, don't try and put everything into seperate packages.

I would recommend using sequence containers to logically seperate your processing in the control-flow. So, where you had a child package before, you now have a sequence container. These can of course run in parallel. And also, only execute those "stuff" for which a file exists - I'm sure you've already gone down that road already anyway.

-Jamie

|||Maybe what I shoudl try first is to put the check if the file exists in the master package and not in the child package. That way it will have to spin up a lot fewer packages.|||

Stark77 wrote:

Maybe what I shoudl try first is to put the check if the file exists in the master package and not in the child package. That way it will have to spin up a lot fewer packages.

Yep, another good idea. Although if you do that your child packages will be (correct me if I'm wrong) only loading up a file and executing a sproc on the data. Such a small amount of work doesn't really justify moving it out into another package.

-Jamie

|||

Ha...finally getting around to doing this. You have any best practices on doing something like this?

Basically here is what I am doing. We get about 30-40 different files in an ftp directory and when they arrive we need to process them. Each file has a different layout. Basically we grab the file, load it to a temp table that matches the file layout and then fire a stored procedure to process the records in the temp table. At the end we delete the file if it was processed successfully. We process the files in a specific order (orderheader, then orderdetail, shipmentheader, shipmentdetail, etc). The only other task we do is to trim all the string variables.

Basically I am wondering the best way to lay this out or if there is a best practice for processing something like this. I thought about looping through all the .txt files in the directory, but that won't process them in the order I want.

Thanks for the help!

|||

I use a table in a management db that contains the files. This way you have utmost control. In addition you can use it to log failures against the files, processing history etc.

You can improve the overhead time a package has by delaying validation on tasks/components. This way the validation only occurs when needed.

|||

Any chance you can script me out your table you use so I can brain storm off of it? Not really following what you are suggesting. How does the package flow out then? Do you have a for each that reads that table? Would be cool to send me over that table and a screenshot of the package or the package itself.

Thanks for the input. I am definitely going to throw an article together once I get this one done.

Hierarchy - Measure question

Hi,

In the cube, i'm using one fact table (I will call just A) as a fact (A) and dimension (A1).

From this table(A) , I created hierarchy ( division - department with primary key from this fact) in the dimension(A1).

And we have another fact table(B) which is not related to the fact (A) and dimension(A1) fisically.

Here is the fact table (B) as under:

Plan Fact : ID(pk), Item_key, Plan_Sales , Date_key

I can join this fact (B) with product dimension which has item_key (pk) and this product dimension has division and deparment key.

My question is that is there anyway to see plan sales measure with the hierarchy I created?

Please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

Hi there,

AFAIK, you could achieve this with Analysis Services 2005.

Your data source view would consist of your department dimension, linked to both of your fact tables. When creating your cube in Analysis Services 2005, the cube creation wizard should pick up that you have two fact tables and a single dimension (you may need to point it in the right direction though!).

This should generate you a cube schema, with a single dimension (department) and two measure groups. One measure group would contain measures from fact table A, and the other measure group would contain measures from fact table B. One use of a measure group is that it can group measures from a single fact table.

Using the cube browser you should be able to drag on your division-department hierarchy, along with the relevant measures from each measure group.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

Jonathon

|||Actually you can create what is called a referenced relationship in AS2005 where one dimension is joined to a fact table through another dimension. So you could relate the A1 dimension to the Plan fact table through the Item dimension.

|||

Hi Darren,

Sorry for the late response and thanks for your reply.

I've tried to make a referenced relationship but it seems it does not give a right value.

if I select the reference dimension attribute : divdep ( which includes all attributes in divdep dimension) and intermediate dimension attribute : item_key ( pk in product dimension) which I join the fact table with, then the total is fine but in each division level and department level , the numbers are not correct.

If I select reference dimension attribute : division name and intermediate dimension attribute: division name , then I can see the right number only in division level. ( My question is do i need to select lowest level in reference dimension attribute? in this case , department name is the lowest in hierarchy. But it gives an error since this dimension does not have some attributes which appears in fact table.)

I need to view the data with division- department hierarchy and I've tried to do every single possible thing but I don't have any clue yet.

I appreciate if you can give me any comments.

Thanks.

|||

I'm not sure I'm completely understanding how you have things setup.

If you have a product dimension which includes an attribute for the department, you should be able to join the department dimension at it's key to the department attribute in the product dimension.

There is an example of a reference relationship in the Adventure Works cube, have a look at the Geography dimension and you should be able to find an example.

Hierarchy - Measure question

Hi,

In the cube, i'm using one fact table (I will call just A) as a fact (A) and dimension (A1).

From this table(A) , I created hierarchy ( division - department with primary key from this fact) in the dimension(A1).

And we have another fact table(B) which is not related to the fact (A) and dimension(A1) fisically.

Here is the fact table (B) as under:

Plan Fact : ID(pk), Item_key, Plan_Sales , Date_key

I can join this fact (B) with product dimension which has item_key (pk) and this product dimension has division and deparment key.

My question is that is there anyway to see plan sales measure with the hierarchy I created?

Please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

Hi there,

AFAIK, you could achieve this with Analysis Services 2005.

Your data source view would consist of your department dimension, linked to both of your fact tables. When creating your cube in Analysis Services 2005, the cube creation wizard should pick up that you have two fact tables and a single dimension (you may need to point it in the right direction though!).

This should generate you a cube schema, with a single dimension (department) and two measure groups. One measure group would contain measures from fact table A, and the other measure group would contain measures from fact table B. One use of a measure group is that it can group measures from a single fact table.

Using the cube browser you should be able to drag on your division-department hierarchy, along with the relevant measures from each measure group.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

Jonathon

|||Actually you can create what is called a referenced relationship in AS2005 where one dimension is joined to a fact table through another dimension. So you could relate the A1 dimension to the Plan fact table through the Item dimension.

|||

Hi Darren,

Sorry for the late response and thanks for your reply.

I've tried to make a referenced relationship but it seems it does not give a right value.

if I select the reference dimension attribute : divdep ( which includes all attributes in divdep dimension) and intermediate dimension attribute : item_key ( pk in product dimension) which I join the fact table with, then the total is fine but in each division level and department level , the numbers are not correct.

If I select reference dimension attribute : division name and intermediate dimension attribute: division name , then I can see the right number only in division level. ( My question is do i need to select lowest level in reference dimension attribute? in this case , department name is the lowest in hierarchy. But it gives an error since this dimension does not have some attributes which appears in fact table.)

I need to view the data with division- department hierarchy and I've tried to do every single possible thing but I don't have any clue yet.

I appreciate if you can give me any comments.

Thanks.

|||

I'm not sure I'm completely understanding how you have things setup.

If you have a product dimension which includes an attribute for the department, you should be able to join the department dimension at it's key to the department attribute in the product dimension.

There is an example of a reference relationship in the Adventure Works cube, have a look at the Geography dimension and you should be able to find an example.

Hierarchy - Measure question

Hi,

In the cube, i'm using one fact table (I will call just A) as a fact (A) and dimension (A1).

From this table(A) , I created hierarchy ( division - department with primary key from this fact) in the dimension(A1).

And we have another fact table(B) which is not related to the fact (A) and dimension(A1) fisically.

Here is the fact table (B) as under:

Plan Fact : ID(pk), Item_key, Plan_Sales , Date_key

I can join this fact (B) with product dimension which has item_key (pk) and this product dimension has division and deparment key.

My question is that is there anyway to see plan sales measure with the hierarchy I created?

Please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

Hi there,

AFAIK, you could achieve this with Analysis Services 2005.

Your data source view would consist of your department dimension, linked to both of your fact tables. When creating your cube in Analysis Services 2005, the cube creation wizard should pick up that you have two fact tables and a single dimension (you may need to point it in the right direction though!).

This should generate you a cube schema, with a single dimension (department) and two measure groups. One measure group would contain measures from fact table A, and the other measure group would contain measures from fact table B. One use of a measure group is that it can group measures from a single fact table.

Using the cube browser you should be able to drag on your division-department hierarchy, along with the relevant measures from each measure group.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

Jonathon

|||Actually you can create what is called a referenced relationship in AS2005 where one dimension is joined to a fact table through another dimension. So you could relate the A1 dimension to the Plan fact table through the Item dimension.|||

Hi Darren,

Sorry for the late response and thanks for your reply.

I've tried to make a referenced relationship but it seems it does not give a right value.

if I select the reference dimension attribute : divdep ( which includes all attributes in divdep dimension) and intermediate dimension attribute : item_key ( pk in product dimension) which I join the fact table with, then the total is fine but in each division level and department level , the numbers are not correct.

If I select reference dimension attribute : division name and intermediate dimension attribute: division name , then I can see the right number only in division level. ( My question is do i need to select lowest level in reference dimension attribute? in this case , department name is the lowest in hierarchy. But it gives an error since this dimension does not have some attributes which appears in fact table.)

I need to view the data with division- department hierarchy and I've tried to do every single possible thing but I don't have any clue yet.

I appreciate if you can give me any comments.

Thanks.

|||

I'm not sure I'm completely understanding how you have things setup.

If you have a product dimension which includes an attribute for the department, you should be able to join the department dimension at it's key to the department attribute in the product dimension.

There is an example of a reference relationship in the Adventure Works cube, have a look at the Geography dimension and you should be able to find an example.