Overview
Whether you distribute your enterprise reports over a local network, a corporate Intranet, or the Web, you can use Crystal Reports' powerful, built-in performance features to deliver web reporting speed.
Crystal Reports automatically provides these major performance advantageseven if you don't apply any of the strategies set out in this section:
- Page-on-demand technology
Page-on-demand report access lets users download only the specific report pages they need to see, thus improving response times and reducing web traffic. Further, placeholders and partial page technology allow you to view report pages and data over the Web immediately, without having to wait for the processing of large objects, such as graphics and subreports.
- Optimized, multithreaded Report Engine
The Crystal Report Engine's enhanced multithreading capabilities and thread-safe database drivers allow you to continue working on your important tasks, while many other operations are processed simultaneously in the background. The Report Engine also minimizes the number of passes made through the data, speeds up processing with improved memory management, and handles subreports and parameters as efficiently as possible.
In addition to these built-in features, the Key strategies for optimizing web reports discussed in the following sections bring additional performance benefits, which are often substantial. When you design new reports (or improve your old ones) in accordance with these strategies, reports run faster and tie up fewer processing resources. Consequently, report users can easily access the data they needfaster than ever.
Tip: If you're new to web reporting, or to reporting in general, reading this section will prepare you for future reporting tasksyou'll gain important insight into designing faster, better reports.
Note: Understanding databases and how they work is often important when considering performance. See Databases overview for background information.