Improving export to Excel performance

[Former Member]

Does anyone have any tips on improving excel performance when exporting a webi report? I don't want to get into discussions on why users are trying to export larger files (in excess of 6MB); I am just looking for suggestions.

When a user runs the export, not only does it take a long time, but there is simply no notification that the export is even processing or if it stopped, etc.

In previous tools, the user could run the same query and it would run and export very quickly, but in BO it could take upwards of 10min or [much] more.

Any ideas? We are on BO 4.0 SP 7 Patch 7 currently, with a planned upgrade to BO 4.1 SP4 over the summer.  Maybe this is no longer an issue with 4.1?

Thanks,

Missy

[former_member148884 · Accepted solution]

Hi all,

I want to clear up some confusion here since this thread has been ongoing for awhile.

I was involved with the initial defect tracked under Note 1994745. I can verify with the fix in place, it does improve performance quite a bit when exporting Webi to Excel.

Note the fix was created based on a sampling of reports we recieved from customers while investigating. It may not address all report design scenarios, so the fix may work in some instances, but not others. I do not know exactly what designs this fix will work for, and what will not unfortunately. It is also not tested when adding compression on the appserver, so I do not know how the fix will act there.

It is also important to note that the fix for Note 1994745 is included in the following or newer BI 4.1 Patch levels:

Support Pack 02 Patch 10
Support Pack 03 Patch 6
Support Pack 04 Patch 7
Support Pack 05 Patch 3
Support Pack 06

If you are on a release older than this, I recommend you patch up when possible and re-check the performance.

If you do upgrade and stlil see performance differences when compared to XI 3.1, please log an incident with support so we can investigate further and engage Development where needed. It will also help the investigation greatly if you could attach sample reports with saved data to the incident that we can test with. It may not always be possible to bring the performance back in line with XI 3.1 due to the differences between the versions, but we can work on closing the gap as much as possible.

Thanks!

Mike

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your response and the details.  I just wanted to note that when I made this original post, it was not based on comparisons with XI 3.1, since our group first started on BO 4.0.  We had users used to other products that produced exports within a minute or two, moving to this new product now that was taking much, much longer.  Not a happy transition despite all the other benefits BO was going to be offering them.

I don't want to speak for everyone, but at least from my/our end, I think the issue was further frustrated by the fact that SAP support did not appear to acknowledge that there was an actual issue/problem/difference/whatever, so it was a relief to not only see others in the same boat, but finally SAP notes referencing potential solutions.

We are only just testing SP5 Patch 4 right now, but so far our testers are 'enjoying' the improved performance, so I imagine our users will be happier now as well.

Thanks,

Missy

[former_member148884 · Accepted solution]

Sorry for the confusion. The original issue that resulted in the fix / Note 1994745 was a scenario where performance was much different in BI 4.1 than it was in XI 3.1.

The fix will also address performance when compared to 4.0 or early releases of 4.1.

I am happy your users are seeing an improvement!

Mike

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Mike,

we have updated the BI4.1 sp4 patch3 to patch 11 to improove the excel export performance,but we did't see any improvement in excel export performance.when the scheduled output is in webi format it takes just 60 secs ,but excel output taking almost 10mins in 4.1.

is there any other parameters needs to changed in BI 4.1 server configuration.

Regards,

Divi.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi!

We are on 4.1 SP6 patch 5 --> performance for exporting to excel for 300k rows is poor.

It takes about 25-30min...

OS: AIX 7.1

RAM: 75GB

CPU: Power 7+

😕

Tom

and just for info...

your kba 2008223 is not released for "normal" people, maybe only for sap internal use...

[former_member148884 · Accepted solution]

Hi Tom,

It appears your current issue may be due to the problem logged under Note 2321158 - Slow performance is experienced when exporting Web Intelligence documents to Excel.

It is currently under Development investigation and any fix will be included in an upcoming SP06, SP07 and SP08 Patch release on 4.1, as well as Patch releases for BI 4.2 SP02 and SP03.

The Note should be updated with the exact release information when it is known.

I hope this helps!

Mike

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Mike!

Thanks for the information. I am wondering why the takes so lóng to fix a bug which worked in further releases...

An there many other things for example the BEXQuery but that is another topic

tom