64bit and dual core questions

[Former Member]

Hi,

We are heavy Crystal Report 10 users and are considering upgrading. I understand that the new Crystal Report 2008 supports 64bit platforms and will run on dual core machines. My question is, does the new Crystal Report 2008 take advantage of the 64bit platforms and dual core machines? And should we expect to see a dramatic performance improvement.

I ask this question as some of our reports can take upwards of 7 hours to crunch and we are considering the move to 64bit and dual core technologies to speed up our processing.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Les Elton

Network Admin.

ABC Recycling Ltd

les@abcrecycling.com

[robert_horne · Accepted solution]

Here's the official word on 64 Bit

http://diamond.businessobjects.com/node/8010

<a href="/blog/10">Rob&#39;s blog - http://diamond.businessobjects.com/robhorne</a>;

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

With all those who have started to use Crystal 2008, for those who have embarked on the change to 64bit.

Is there a speed increase when using Crystal 2008 on a 64bit machine ?

Or should I expect the same speed ?

Les Elton

[former_member11696]

By default 32 bit applications do run considerably faster on 64 bit OS's. They are still limited to the 32 bit 4 gig memory space and 32 bit API set but due to the nature of 64 bit OS's 32 bit applications just run faster. Not sure how much faster you will see but it should be noticable.

Check Pervasives WEB site for currently supported versions also. You will need to stick with 32 bit client/server engine depending on if you are using the Server or Work Group version of Pervasive. If Pervasives client is capable of thunking 64 to 32 bit data then it should also work in CR.

You may want to consider moving to Crystal Report Server which is designed for small companies. This product allows you to schedule reports so they are ready for you in the morning and can be sent to the users who need them.

[former_member183781]

How many records are you returning on a 7-hour report..?

Is that 7-hour crunch on the CR-side or on the SQL/DB side...?

You can test this by copying the SQL from the report into your DB tool, and seeing how long the query alone is taking.

[Former Member]

We are returning alot of records, 13947 to be precise.

This is a report of all our purchases for the year 2007 out of our accounting database.

This is reporting on a Pervasive SQL 9 database. I am unsure what utility to use to simulate the query. I have "Function Executer" , "Maintance" and "Monitor"

Our goal is to speed up these larger reports so they can go faster. Our workstation and server Task Manager specs are below:

Workstation:

LAN around 0% usage

2 x CPU around 0 - 1 % usage

Page File = 331MB steady

Server:

LAN around 0 - 0.5% usage

4 x CPU around 25% average **

Page File = 2.57GB steady

LAN is 1000Base to the workstation through a high-end gigibit switch. But it looks like the majority of the processing is being done at the server and only within the server CPU's. Server has some really beefy hardware (two dual core processers at 2.6Ghz each, and 12 Gig of ram). Database is 3 Gig in size, OS= Windows 2003 32bit which I am thinking of moving to 64bit as long as Pervasive has a version that will support it.

Any idea ?

Les Elton

[Former Member]

Hey Les,

I'm curious what your answer is to Mark's question (on running the query by itself).

That's really not a lot of records at all.

Our stuff goes against millions of records, in Cobol, and nothing I know of approaches 7 hours.

Are you doing all the processing in Crystal ? Even so...

At WebMD we ran a test against 1M records, it returned 30k records, there was a chart, a sub, formulas, etc. Running directly against Oracle, it took 27 seconds. After building the data warehouse (SQL), using .Net and a report with a dataset, we got it down to 4 seconds.

I'd hate to see you put out the bucks and find out it's not what you need.

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