Can’t this Report Run Any Faster?
August 16, 06 by kenrichSo my boss just came to me and told me we needed to speed up the reporting feature on one area of the website. He was trying to pull up a report consisting of 40 applications. There are about 10 columns of data for each application. Each column of the report is compiled dynamically by performing a sub-select in the database.
What this means is that for each statistic displayed, you have to run a complex query on a sizable database. When combining all the records and columns together this makes for a time consuming process. So how should we go about fixing this problem? The only solution that I could see is to pre-compile these statistics into a temporary table so that the sub-selects don’t have to be run each time a report is generated.
Do you ever get the feeling that you are just optimizing the software to deal with limitations in hardware performance? I could really go on-and-on about how cheap my company is. But it really wouldn’t do me any good… management has heard the arguments time-and-time again. I guess I had better get back to work – I have to modify our software so that we have the appearance of having fast software.
