Hi,

We are builing a new environment with 8 CPU's and 8 Ghz Memory and is a Sun Solaris Machine. It has got the Parallel processing funtionality.

Does WebFocus support Parallel Processing?
Does Reporting Server make use of O/S Parallel Processing funtionality?

Thanks,
Amarnath

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kerry,

Have you talked to your IBI rep ?

WF just builds SQL and sends it to the engine for the platform it runs on, correct? If you have parallelism enabled on that engine, what would not allow it to work?

Its not about Database, i know Database performs Parallel Processing.

I am thiking about the job done by Reporting Server,does Reporting server support parallel processing?

I don't think so.


I think you should talk to your IBI rep, or put in a case with IBI so you can get an appropriate answer for your version of WebFOCUS, and OS.

quote:

does Reporting server support parallel processing

No.

There have been a few discussions about this recently.

The WebFOCUS server will start a particular task on any processor available to it.
So it is processor independant.

If a request is made to a database engine that supports multi-tasking then that particular
part of the request will use multiple processors (WebFOCUS adapter configuration permitting).

However the WebFOCUS server parts of the request are bound to the one processor.

  



    Four processor machine
    ____________________________________________
    |                                           |
    |                                           |
    |                                           |
    |               Oracle                      |
    |              /------\                     |
    |             / /----\ \                    |
    |  WebFOCUS  / /      \ \   WebFOCUS        |
    |  Process---            --- Process        |
    |            \ \      / /                   |
    |             \ \----/ /                    |
    |              \------/                     |
    |                                           |
    |                                           |
    |                                           |
    |                                           |
    |                                           |
    ____________________________________________

For the WebFOCUS/FOCUS language to support parallel processing, IBI would have to add languane extensions to Dialogue Manager. You would have to be able to identify sections of code that are independent of each other and identify WAIT places. For example, I have a large program that collects data from more than 100 tables in our Oracle database and creates an XFOCUS database that is used for reporting.

Step 1 creates file and loads the population.
Step 2 collects data and updates.
Step 3 collects data and updates.
Step 4 collects data and updates.
....
Step 30 collects data and updates

This is a weekly batch job that runs around 3am and takes about 45 minutes to run, however, Steps 2-30 could run in parallel because they do not add to the population.

Since this program originated back in the dark times (before WebFOCUS), if I was going to do this program now and use parallel processing, I would write 30 distinct programs. After the population is created in step 1, I would use 29 DSTRUN calls in fex 1 to run the last 29 fexes. DSTRUN tells Report Caster to run a job now, so all 29 jobs would fire at the same time. I don't know that I would gain a lot, but it would be interesting to see how that would work.

quote:

so all 29 jobs would fire at the same time

You have to re-configure caster as the default is 3 concurrent caster processes.

There are ways to load-balance across multiple reporting services, each of which can be started on separate processors. It can be done, though it's not a transparent thing that magically happens. A good SE can get you set up to work across multiple processors.

I'll be honest -- short of heavy processing on FOCUS data files or some really hairy cross-DBMS joins the processing time on the Reporting Server (or WF Client for that matter) shouldn't be all that significant. Unless you're in a pretty complex environment multi-processing will only be an issue for the underlying DBMS. Your conversion to a multi-processor configuration may introduce more processing time than it reduces.

I'd wait until the problem presents itself before worrying about it. I'm on a four processor system and the tscoms are pulling very little juice. It's all in SQL Server.

S.

Thank you guys for your valuable feedback