Skip to Main Content
Spotfire Ideas Portal
Status Future Consideration
Product Spotfire
Categories Library
Created by Guest
Created on Dec 14, 2017

Get rich logging details about loaded web reports

When using Spotfire professional, a report creator can review the exact information about their report in the diagnostics page (things such as report size, query cache size, runtime, tables, etc).

In the various logs outwards (Web logs, mem logs), these does not be this type of data exposed anywhere. It would be ideal that the administrator can review this type of detail without opening reports (especially given it is done at least once by the web player)

  • Attach files
  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Dec 19, 2017

    I don't think you have looked into Action Logging properly. Rows counts are easy to see, enable it on your system and have a look at these events:

    Category = datasource_wp (or datafunction_pro for Professional client queries)
    Action = execute
    arg4 = NumRows

     

    Memory usage on Web player is not straight forward since there is a lot of sharing involved, particularly for scheduled updates. You can use the WP Instance Diagnostics screen which has similar memory estimations. Action Logging provides a clue as it logs how much data has been transferred from the database. Have a look at these events:

     

    Category = info_link 

    Action = get_data
    arg2 = sizeb

     

    Ultimately the only one who can say if it works for what you want is yourself. So go and have a look, it's only takes a minute or two to set it up.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Dec 19, 2017

    Hi Christian,

    Specifically what I'm looking for would be under the Help-> Support Diagnostics and Logging -> Diagnostics Information Tab.  See screenshot attached.

    In this case, I'm looking for the Approximate table/view sizes, and the row count.  Scrolling through the links you showed, they are getting me closer, but I don't think it will still get me those values.

    The core value we're trying to achieve here is the issue of auditing reports in production.  We've been struggling now with server capacity issue, and it's extremely painful to find out which team/developer/user has completely misused the product by jamming in data into a report where they aren't using it. 

    We need faster and easily identifiable, internal system that allows us to pinpoint which reports (and more specifically, which data table or logic) are potential risk offenders that we need to look at, and all the metrics that we have (cell count, general physical size of report file) aren't good enough to do just that.

    Our current process, once we've done the entire whack-a-mole of opening each report and looking through it, is reviewing this page to see if there is something completely flagrant:  in the recent case, it is a) one creator had a report of 100 columns and threw in 100 calculated columns (because they didn't want to engage the database team); b) a report that had a table dimension of 600+ columns, but only 10 are used for reporting and c) a pivot table against a million+ rows that could have been simplified outside of Spotfire.

    The thinking is that if such value is captured in Professional, it may be captured either in a scheduled log, or captured when report is loaded via web.  Allowing the support team to capture this information.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Dec 19, 2017

    PS: I think this idea already exists in the product. 

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Dec 19, 2017

    Sounds like a lazy response from Tibco Support which you should have pushed harder. I can confirm Action Logging logs row counts. I am not sure what you mean by table size. The link you posted is only showing sample output for some Action log categories, not all. For all the Action log categories:

    https://docs.tibco.com/pub/spotfire_server/7.11.0/doc/html/TIB_sfire_server_tsas_admin_help/GUID-FE99F56A-F43C-4076-8F0F-DC292606FF3C.html

    To see what each Action log categories logs:

    https://docs.tibco.com/pub/spotfire_server/7.11.0/doc/html/TIB_sfire_server_tsas_admin_help/GUID-67B1DBFC-B1DB-49B1-A492-4B684FAADB72.html

     

     

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Dec 14, 2017

    I had actually submitted this as an actual request, and the support person could not confirm it had this in Action Logs either.

    Can you confirm that the metrics that are captured in the Professional diagnostics (IE: Exact table row count loaded, column count, each table size) is captured in Action Logs?

    I'm looking through the action log reference https://docs.tibco.com/pub/spotfire_server/7.11.0/doc/html/TIB_sfire_server_tsas_admin_help/GUID-86DCB29E-06EE-4337-8F77-3D488F833796.html And I do not see if the type of data I am looking for is there.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Dec 14, 2017

    Action Logging has all of this: 
    https://docs.tibco.com/pub/spotfire_server/7.11.0/doc/html/TIB_sfire_server_tsas_admin_help/GUID-6083CDAB-E023-4144-A65E-3559706FBA3A.html