Experiencing intermittent slowdowns in production when generating and printing reports

[former_member699868]

We have a customer who is reporting intermittent longer than acceptable print times for documents. Based on their review of our log files, this occurs on between 15% and 25% of the print jobs that the program automatically starts. Print jobs normally take less than 10 seconds, but affected jobs can take up to 5 minutes to complete.

Based on our review of the log files, these slowdowns can occur in two places:

mDocument.Load(mCriteria.FilePath, OpenReportMethod.OpenReportByTempCopy)

where mDocument is a ReportDocument object, and

Dim printerSetting As New PrinterSettings()
Dim pageSetting As New PageSettings()
Report.ReportDocument.PrintOptions.CopyTo(printerSetting, pageSetting)

with the slowdown occurring in the CopyTo call, Report.ReportDocument is a ReportDocument object.

We develop on and package with the application SP16 of Crystal Reports for Visual Studio. The report files are stored in a network folder, though in this context the network folder is on the same server that is executing the print job.

We have tried updating the customer to use the most recent SP28 of the CR Runtime. We have tried setting the reports to have "No printer" checked.

Updating the runtime had no apparent effect. Changing the reports to have "No printer" checked caused the slowdowns that occur in the .Load call to stop, but they can still occur in the .CopyTo call.

Since checking "No printer" had a positive impact, we believe it is printer related, but we aren't sure what we should be checking. How should we proceed in diagnosing and/or fixing this issue?

[jerryjanda]

Hi, Cameron:

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Kind regards,

--Jerry

[former_member699868]

Hi Jerry,

Thank you for the response. I've updated the original question based on the tips in https://blogs.sap.com/2019/11/25/help-us-to-help-you-good-questions-beget-good-answers/. Unfortunately, since it is occurring to only one of our customers and even then it seems to be happening randomly, I don't know how to make this issue reproducible.

If it's still lacking, could you please be specific so I can directly address it.

Thank you,

Cameron

[former_member699868]

The edit action is not available to me at this time, so I'm attaching additional information as a comment.

I've more details for the situation post update and with "No files" checked.

I did my own analysis of the log files rather than rely on the customer's. I wrote a tool so I could review all of them rather than a subset. I looked over a 48-hour period.

Of the 1381 print jobs, 190 experienced slow downs of >30 seconds. 55 of the jobs had a slowdown at

Dim printerSetting As New PrinterSettings()
Dim pageSetting As New PageSettings()
Report.ReportDocument.PrintOptions.CopyTo(printerSetting, pageSetting)

0 of the jobs had slowdowns at the .Load.

170 of the jobs had slowdowns in our wrapper class's constructor. While I don't know with 100% certainty, I'm pretty confident it is occurring in the ReportDocument constructor.

Private mCriteria As ReportGenerationCriteria 
Private mData As ReportData 
Private mDocument As New ReportDocument 

Public Sub New(ByVal ReportCriteria As ReportGenerationCriteria, ByVal ReportData As ReportData, logger As WriteToLog)
    mCriteria = ReportCriteria 
    mData = ReportData
    mDocument.Load(mCriteria.FilePath, OpenReportMethod.OpenReportByTempCopy)
End Sub 

I've omitted all the logging we have in the methods for clarity, but they're there and it's been how I've been determining where the slowdowns are occurring. In this case, the slowdown is occurring between the constructor call of our wrapper and the .Load. Field setters I assume wouldn't cause slowdowns, so that leaves the mDocument initialization.

[former_member699868]

I found a ZIP with a 24 hour period of logs from after the "No printer" on the reports were checked, and before the SP28 update, so I ran them past my script.

There were no slowdowns in the constructor or the .Load. All slowdowns occurred in the PrintOptions.CopyTo call.

So the sequence is:

1. "No printer" unchecked, SP16. Slowdowns in .Load and PrintOptions.CopyTo.
2. "No printer" checked, SP16. Slowdowns in PrintOptions.CopyTo.
3. "No printer" checked, SP28. Slowdowns in PrintOptions.CopyTo and presumably ReportDocument.ctor.

[gottfried_hrmandinger]

PS: Often you can find the recommendation to use Report Application Server(RAS) component(PrintOutputController.PrintReport), instead of PrintToPrinter method.

https://apps.support.sap.com/sap/support/knowledge/en/1729446

For us at the moment no option, because it is not possible to set all printer settings which we are using at the moment.

[former_member699868]

Hi Gottfried,

We have it printing like that.

Dim rcd = Report.ReportDocument.ReportClientDocument
Dim options As New Controllers.PrintReportOptions
...
rcd.PrintOutputController.PrintReport(options)