Improving document generation performance

You might shorten the time Rational® Publishing Engine takes to generate an output document by trying these steps.

Procedure

  1. Use lists and paragraphs in your template instead of tables whenever possible.
  2. Replace scripted sorts and filters by native sorts or filters wherever possible. If you are using Rational Publishing Engine filters in your template, Rational Publishing Engine is processing the data from the data source. Instead, use native filters to reallocate the filtering work to the data source application or the Reporting Data Services Adapters rather than Rational Publishing Engine. See Extracting data by using native filters and Sorting data from a query for more information.
  3. Specify authentication types for data sources and templates in the document specification properties. See Specifying the authentication type for a data source in a document specification for more information.
  4. Minimize the number of requests that Rational Publishing Engine has to make from the template to the data source. The fewer requests you have, the less time is required for a document to generate.
    Where you can, minimize the number of data requests that are required. The number of data requests required depends on how you structure your queries on elements at the top level, whether you use a Data source configuration element, and whether you use filters.
    Table 1. Recommended scenarios
    Recommended scenarios that require the fewest requests Number of requests
    2 containers with queries under a single parent query + Data source configuration element
    A container that has a Data source configuration element, and then a container that has a container and another container.
    1
    2 containers with queries under a single parent container and each have a different filter + Data source configuration element
    A container that has a Data source configuration element, a container with a filter, and another container with a filter.
    2
    Table 2. Alternative scenarios
    Alternative scenarios that require additional requests Number of requests
    2 independent containers that each have a top-level query + Data source configuration element
    A container that has a Data source configuration element, a container, and another container.
    2
    Note: If the total request time is logged greater than the total document generation time, this may happen if data read ahead is set to true, if the data has pagination or if images are being downloaded. The request time reported by Rational Publishing Engine is not an absolute value even when it is less than the total document generation time. The request time does not indicate the actual engine processing time due to parallelism in the document generation engine.
  5. Remove output types that you are not using from the document specification. See Deleting output formats for more information.
  6. If you are generating documents remotely, but you are not using the Central Management component, enter an individual Remote document generation URL in the Remote services preferences instead of one Remote services URL for all of the components.

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