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Thenuwara & Munasinghe
be increased. Performance of the report In one way, it slows down the process of
generation process is important for the fetching data atomically. The reason for this
business process as it directly impacts the is the fields that are used in filtering being
accuracy and efficiency of decision making not indexed could slow down the process of
process of a business. If a report generation data transfer from database. The other is the
takes more than 10 minutes to respond, that way that the fetching is done. (Fitzgerald &
would cost time and resources of the client. Neil, 2008). Using a view rather than a table
This can cause not only increasing the would have positive effects on efficiency.
waiting time but also idle time of the Generally, a view is preferred because views
machine and the operator. Time is the most can provide abstraction over tables. In a
critical factor for businesses, as this client view, fields can be added/removed easily
base is mostly global suppliers and without modifying the underlying schema.
customers. In the highly competitive tourism Therefore, using views is more flexible.
industry, businesses lose customers within a Moreover, views can model complex joins
matter of seconds. As a service provider, the easily as well as they can hide database-
company should be able to fulfil the needs specific information from the viewer. The
of its clients in a way that they can be ahead user permissions granted can be managable
of their competitors. easily and directly on views, rather than on
Therefore, according to the standards actual tables. If the database administrator is
and informal agreements within the aware of a certain user may only access a
company, the performance of the report certain view, it provides him better
generation process should be increased to a management flexibilityViews can help with
rate which the results generated within at backwards compatibility where they can
least five to ten minutes. To achieve this, the hide the facts from a certain client when an
whole process of report generation was underlying schema is changed (Emelda,
investigated and solutions are proposed to 2011)
avoid possible bottlenecks.
However, views can have severe
The objective of this research was to adverse effect on a report's performance,
find a feasible solution for filtering the mainly because views do not have indexes.
dynamically increasing bulk data and speed A view might be a collection of tables or a
up the process of report generation in Report subset of rows or columns, much like a basic
Manager Tool. report, which is often used to simplify data
2 LITERATURE REVIEW for end users. Moreover, other than directly
accessing the table itself, a database view
Crystal Reports work using the can be used to make quick access to data.
operating system’s memory management. It (Business Intelligence Solutions by SAP ,
creates swap files, which first loaded in to 2016). Due to the unavailability of indexing
the random access memory (RAM) and then facility in database views, they are much
loaded to Hard Drive (HD) when RAM is slower compared to the database tables
full. As HD is slower than RAM, RAM when fetching data. Not only that but also
capacity is a decisive factor in improving the information about relations (primary
performance of report generation. (SAP SE,
2016; SAP Community, 2012) keys, foreign keys) will be lost if views are
used. Possibility of performing insert/update
The data is loaded into Crystal Report functions on a view is not very obvious, due
engine from the database. To fetch the data, to the reason that a view hides its underlying
SQL Queries are used. Query format is joins. Nonetheless, this can be ignored
important when considering the time taken because insert/update queries are not used in
to fetch the data. The aspects of the database generating reports (Bahler, 2001). ODBC
where the data for the reports are fetched drivers are used by Crystal Reports to attach
also impact on the performance in two ways. to the database. Usually there are several
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