IBM Cognos report performance considerations

Reports are desirable components to add to dashboards because they add a visual element that makes it easy to scan large amounts of data. However, because reports require additional processing resources, performance can become an issue when many users access dashboards that contain many reports on a regular basis.

While organizations use data in different ways tailored to their needs, this section provides some general guidelines that should help you improve performance for dashboards that contain IBM® Cognos® reports. All of these guidelines apply to IBM Cognos report portlets, which are the most resource-intensive.

Scheduling runs in IBM Cognos

IBM Cognos reports can be scheduled to run at regular intervals. When a report is scheduled, it does not run every time a user accesses a dashboard containing that report. The result is improved performance of dashboards containing the report.

Only HCL Marketing Software reports that do not contain a user ID parameter can be scheduled in Cognos. When a report has no ID parameter, all users see the same data; the data is not filtered based on the user. The following portlets cannot be scheduled.

  • All of the Campaign pre-defined portlets
  • The Marketing Operations My Task Summary and My Approval Summary pre-defined portlets

Scheduling reports is a task that you perform in IBM Cognos; consult the Cognos documentation to learn more about scheduling in general. For specific scheduling requirements for dashboard portlets, see Scheduling a dashboard report.

Data considerations

You should plan scheduled runs based on the data contained in the report. For example, you would run the Offer Responses for Last 7 Days dashboard report every night so that it contains information relevant to seven days preceding the current day. In contrast, you might choose to run the Marketing Financials Position dashboard report once a week, because it compares financial indicators on a quarterly basis.

User expectations

An additional scheduling consideration is how frequently the intended users of the report expect the data to be updated. You should consult users about this when planning schedules.

Guidelines

Here are some broad guidelines to help you plan scheduling for dashboard IBM Cognos reports.

  • Reports that include roll-up information should generally be scheduled to run every night.
  • Reports that contain many calculations should be placed on a schedule.