Managing Deferred Workload

In this section:

Because you can connect from a single WebFOCUS Client installation to multiple WebFOCUS Reporting Servers, a single user can have deferred tickets for output residing on multiple servers. These servers can be on different platforms and may require different user IDs. Users have access to all deferred output, regardless of location, and are prompted for credentials automatically as needed.

There are administrator settings for managing deferred workload. Each server can have an alternate deferred server to separate interactive and deferred processing. You can limit the number of server agents allocated to handling deferred requests and the number of deferred requests a given user can process at one time.

Deferred request properties are available from the Reporting Server Web Console. To access them, select Workspace from the Web Console main menu, right-click DFM_DEFAULT in the Data Services folder, and select Properties. For more information, see the Server Administration for UNIX, Windows, OpenVMS, IBM i, and z/OS manual.


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Understanding Alternate Deferred Servers

You can configure an alternate deferred server for one or more of your interactive servers. This type of configuration causes deferred requests to run against a specific server. For example, if you are building a report in a domain that has a server set to HPUXPROD, if you do not change this setting, the report runs against HPUXPROD when run interactively or deferred. If you configure an alternative deferred HPPRODDF server for the HPUXPROD server, deferred requests are run against the HPPRODDF server because of the relationship configured in the WebFOCUS Administration Console Reporting Servers Deferred Server Mapping settings, as shown in the following image.

Configuring alternate deferred servers is one way to manage deferred workload. Typically, the alternate deferred server is given fewer processing resources because users are not waiting interactively for the request to finish. This allows the interactive servers to have relatively more processing resources.

If you do not have access to the WebFOCUS Administration Console, contact your WebFOCUS Administrator or see the WebFOCUS Security and Administration manual.


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Configuring Deferred Services

You can also manage the resources allocated to processing deferred requests without configuring additional servers. In the Reporting Server Web Console, you can use the DFM_DEFAULT properties in the Data Services folder to configure workload settings for the DEFAULT data server. Each data server has a DFM service for which you can configure workload settings for deferred requests, independent of interactive requests.

For example, the default max_connections_per_user value of -1 does not impose a limit on the number of deferred requests a user can submit. You can change the max_connections_per_user value to 1 for the DFM_DEFAULT Data Service while allowing users to submit unlimited concurrent interactive requests, as shown in the following image.

If you do not have access to the WebFOCUS Server Web Console, contact your WebFOCUS Server Administrator or see the Server Administration for UNIX, Windows, OpenVMS, IBM i, and z/OS manual.


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Deferred Report Expiration Setting

How to:

The WebFOCUS Reporting Server has an output expiration setting that controls when deferred output is purged from the WebFOCUS Reporting Server. This setting is configured using the Reporting Server configuration file (Windows and UNIX) and the deferred receipt listener node block (on z/OS).



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Syntax: How to Control Purging of Deferred Output
dfm_maxage={0|n}

where:

0

Indicates no expiration is configured.

n

Indicates n days until expiration. 30 is the default.

No setting means that the default of 30 days will be in effect.

The number of days until expiration are displayed in the Managed Reporting Deferred Status Interface next to each report. On the last day, the Today value is displayed.

Note: Cleanup of deferred output stored on the WebFOCUS Reporting Server is facilitated by the Deferred Management listener, which checks every time it wakes up. The sleep interval for the listener is defined by the dfm_int_max parameter which defaults to 30 seconds if not specified. For more information about this and related parameters, see Deferred Management Properties in the Listeners and Special Services chapter of the Server Administration for UNIX, Windows, OpenVMS, IBM i, and z/OS manual or the Web Console Help system.

If a deferred report is not saved or deleted prior to its expiration, the output is automatically deleted from the WebFOCUS Reporting Server dfm_dir directory and the deferred report is moved to the Unknown category in the Deferred Report Status Interface. From the Unknown category, the user can only delete the unknown report. For more information about cleaning up unknown deferred tickets, see Managing the Deferred Ticket Cleanup Utility.


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