HP Intelligent Management Center Standard Software Platform - Manual (Page 174)

Streamlining your reporting environment
Another step to ensuring that report users receive their information quickly
is to assess your reporting environment. What kind of database do you use?
How is data organized within the database? How are you connecting to the
data you need to report off? How are you linking your database tables? By
taking these important considerations into account, you can significantly
minimize the amount of data that must physically travel across the network.
Selecting the fastest database and connection
To improve reporting performance, utilize your database to its full potential
by having it do the majority of your report processing. Ideally, Structured
Query Language (SQL) databases are the most efficient for carrying out this
task.
For details on SQL databases, see Using SQL and SQL databases .
Using table indexes
You can also improve the way your data is organized within the database.
For optimum processing speed, report off indexed fields on your SQL
database. Using table indexes is an easy way to increase the speed of data
access and to reduce the time it takes for Crystal Reports to evaluate data.
For a complete description of how table indexing works, see Indexed tables .
Improving table-linking choices
When you add multiple database tables to your report, you link the tables
on a common field so that records from one table match related records from
another. (Table linking works best if your database tables are indexed.)
Linking your database tables in this way is usually much faster than
incorporating linked subreports into your main report.
When you link two or more tables, you want your report to read as few records
as possible, while at the same time finding all matching records. The best
174 Crystal Reports 2008 SP3 User's Guide
Designing Optimized Web Reports 8
Streamlining your reporting environment