Now in use by Unilever in the UK, the Nordic Region and France and by Schering Healthcare, UK

Contents

• Introduction
• Traditional Approach
• Report Accelerator Approach

Introduction

Slow running reports are amongst the most common performance problems we come across. At Customer Systems we understand how Siebel interfaces with reporting tools and we are able to offer reporting expertise that is second to none. We have a large number of techniques available to us to improve Actuate report performance including using more efficient programming techniques in the reports and optimising the way the object layer is used for reporting. Using these techniques we can usually improve performance by 30% to 40%.

However for really fast reporting it is necessary to bypass the Siebel application and report directly against the Siebel database. Our specialist Report Accelerator product sets an entirely new benchmark for report performance in Siebel allowing reports to address the Siebel database directly whilst still maintaining the current query and Siebel visibility rules.

In benchmark tests we have shown traditional Actuate reports that have taken several hours to run can be generated in a few seconds (99%+ improvements) and reports that previously failed to generate (with run times over 10 hours) become practical and generate in less than a minute.

Traditional Report	Accelerated Report
1 hour 56 minutes	30 seconds
30 minutes	8 seconds

Table 1 Benchmark Results

Traditional Approach

As standard, Actuate Reports either connect to an active Siebel client or an object manager on the Siebel server to collect data. There are huge benefits of reporting in this way.

First, Siebel automatically enforces visibility in the report data. This means you can be certain that when a user generates a report it will only contain the data that user is entitled to see in the Siebel application.

Second, if the user queries Siebel for a particular set of data and then requests a report, the user’s query will automatically be applied to the report data.

However, there are limitations to the types of report we can realistically generate in this way. Reports on large volumes of data run slowly because it takes a long time for the Siebel application to process the records. For example, this happens when a high level user runs a report that includes the data of every member of his team. Similar performance problems can occur with smaller volumes of data if the report data requirement is complex, requiring data from multiple business objects in Siebel.

Report Accelerator Approach

Previously, the only way of creating fast reports in Siebel was to optimise the report design and apply some advanced techniques – 30% to 40% improvement is possible. If a larger improvement in performance was required then the last rest resort was to rewrite the report to bypass the Siebel application and address the database directly. This was a last resort because, by doing this, the benefits having Siebel visibility and the user’s query applied in the report were lost.

Report Accelerator is a new technology available from Customer Systems. It provides Siebel visibility and query restrictions to database level reports so that, now, it is possible to have direct to database performance without loosing any of the close integration to Siebel that report users are used to.

Benefits

• Immediate
  Previously slow reports can be generated in seconds.
• Standard Features
  All of the features available with standard reporting in Siebel are also standard in Accelerated Actuate reports. The user experience is far faster while remaining as rich as it always has been.
• Management Reporting
  Actuate has traditionally only been used for operational reporting where the volumes of data are low. Using Report Accelerator Actuate can now be used to generate management information quickly and from within the Siebel application. This could remove the requirement for a separate, costly, management reporting application.

Summary

Report Accelerator provides better than 99% improvement in report generation times whilst maintaining the close integration between the Siebel application and reports. This makes many new reports possible and even opens reporting to new communities of users.