I'm new to WebFocus/ReportCaster and have been handed an undocumented older version of WF, ReportCaster and the BI Dashboard. We are having an issue with user's requesting reports that are huge (10+MB) and hosing our server resources and ultimately dragging down disk space. I need the quickest, easiest way to remedy this as apparently original developers did not bake in any rowcount/size limitations into report requests. Is there a way to restrict the size of a request from the dashboard and display a message to the user they have exceeded the size request parameters? Any help, or direction to online help manuals for this type of coding is appreciated!! Thanks!

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

In my opinion output reports of that size should always be avoided, since people tend to download all the data and use excel to create reports.
I think you should create reports that do give information and not raw data, so it should never be that huge
Drill down at lower level should give some details.

Restricting end user to only partial information would not give the information one need.

Report size can be limited by General or user specific WHERE statements, record read limit, or record output limits. You could also invoke rules through the use of Resource Governor.
Your disk space problem could also be caused by temporary files left behind by badly terminated reports or log file settings that don't limit the size or number of log files created. If you bounce the WebFOCUS Reporting Server you will regain the space lost to these temporary files.

You might like SET WEBVIEWER = ON so that the report is brought back to the browser 1 page at a time.
Yes to your question about limits;
if in your original fex, you HOLD the initial extract file, you can test for the size of that file before you decide if it is reasonable to present the results to the user.
TABLE FILE CAR
PRINT MODEL
ON TABLE HOLD
END
-RUN
-SET &howmany = &LINES ;
-IF &howmany LE 100000 GOTO rep.gen ;
-TYPE Dude, you've just asked for &howmany records; way too many; Refine your parameter selection, and try again
-EXIT
-rep.gen
TABLE FILE HOLD
... do some nice styling and present results to user
END

There would have to be a caveat on this, as it should depend on the type of report being produced.

Consider PDF reports, these are formatted and can contain much information, then add images, logos, etc. This will make an even larger report. They can get quite large.

You need to be very carefull about any blanket restrictions on output.