HP 3000 Manuals

HP ALLBASE/BRW Reference Manual

Bundling Reports 

In addition to tuning single reports for best run-time performance, you
can improve performance of a whole set of reports by using database
extract files.

For example, the Production Forecast report, PRODFCST, and the Customer
Statement report, CUSTORD, both access datasets PRODUCTS, ORDERS and
ORDER-DETAILS. The report CUSTORD also accesses the dataset CUSTOMERS.

You can improve the overall performance for both reports by creating a
database extract file for the data from PRODUCTS, ORDERS and
ORDER-DETAILS which is used by the PRODFCST report.  The report CUSTORD
then accesses only this file and the dataset CUSTOMERS.

Performance improvements can be considerable, especially when you report
only monthly data and the database contains data for the whole year.

The diagram below shows how data flows from the datasets to the final
reports:


            

The source tables for the PRODFCST report are defined as shown here on
the Define Table screen:


            

On the Output File screen an output file is created for PRODFCST, as
shown here:


            

The following section of the Define Table screen shows how the output
file for PRODFCST is joined to the source table for CUSTORD:


            


NOTE  You tell HP ALLBASE/BRW that the source table is an intermediate
      report file by entering an character before the file name/location
      in the Location field.  Whenever you specify an intermediate report
      file on the Define Tables screen, enter an arbitrary name in the
      Source Table field, and an > character, followed by the file
      name/location, in the Location field.  See the above example of
      >PRODS.


You can create a report job file to produce both reports with one
request.  See the sample report job file in the section About Report Job 
Files  in Chapter 11.

MPE/iX 5.0 Documentation