We have a system that records data to an SQL Server DB captured from field equipment every minute. This data is used for a number of purposes, one of which is for charting in reports via SSRS.
The issue is that with such a high volume of data, when a report is run for period of for example 3 months, the volume of data returned obviously causes excessive report rendering times.
I've been thinking of finding a way of dynamically reducing the amount of data returned, based on the start and end time periods chosen. Something along the lines of a sliding scale where from the duration between the start and end period, I can apply different levels of filtering so that where larger periods are chosen, more filtering occurs while for smaller periods less or no filtering occurs.
There is still a need to be able to produce higher resolution (as in more data points returned) reports for troubleshooting purposes.
For example:
Scenario 1:
User is executing a report for a period of 3 months. Result set returned by the query is reduced for performance reasons without adversely affecting what information the user wants to see (the chart is still representative of the changes over time).
Scenario 2:
User executes the report for a period of 1 hour, in order to look for potential indicator(s) of problems with field devices while troubleshooting the system. For this short time period, no filtering is applied.
My first thought was to use a modulo operation on the primary key of the data (which is an identity field), whereby the divisor is chosen depending on the difference between the start and end dates.
For example, something like if the difference between the start and end dates for the report execution period is 5 weeks, choose a divisor of 5 and apply a mod to the PK, selecting where the result is equal to zero.
I would love to get feedback as to whether this sounds like a valid approach or whether there is a better way to do this.
Thanks.
Related
I have an application which calls the database multiple times to achieve one simple goal.
A little information about this application; In short, the application scrapes data from a webpage & stores specific information from this page into a database. The important information in this query is: Player name, Position. There can be multiple sitting at one specific position, kill points & Class
Player name has every potential to change or remain the same every day
Regarding the Position, there can be multiple sitting in one position
Kill points has the potential to increase or remain the same every day
Class, there is only 2 possibilities that a name can be, Ex: A can change to B or remain A (same in reverse), but cannot be C,D,E,F
The player name can change at any particular day, Position can also change dependent on the kill point increase from the last update which spins back around to the goal. This is to search the database day by day, from the current date to as far back as 2021-02-22 starting at the most recent entry for a player name and back track to the previous day to check if that player name is still the same or has changed.
What is being used as a main reference to the change is the kill points. As the days go on, this number will either be the exact same or increase, it can never decrease.
So now onto the implementation of this application.
The first query which runs finds the most recent entry for the player name
SELECT TOP(1) * FROM [changes] WHERE [CharacterName]=#charname AND [Territory]=#territory AND [Archived]=0 ORDER BY [Recorded] DESC
Then continue to check the previous days entries with the following query:
SELECT TOP(1) * FROM [changes] WHERE [Territory]=#territory AND [CharacterName]=#charname AND [Recorded]=#searchdate AND ([Class] LIKE '%{Class}%' OR [Class] LIKE '%{GetOpposite(Class)}%' AND [Archived]=0 )
If no results are found, will then proceed to find an alternative name with the following query:
SELECT TOP(5) * FROM [changes] WHERE [Kills] <= #kills AND [Recorded]='{Data.Recorded.AddDays(-1):yyyy-MM-dd}' AND [Territory]=#territory AND [Mode]=#mode AND ([Class] LIKE #original OR [Class] LIKE #opposite) AND [Archived]=0 ORDER BY [Kills] DESC
The aim of the query above is to get the top 5 entries that are the closest possible matches & Then cross references with the day ahead
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM [changes] WHERE [CharacterName]=#CharacterName AND [Territory]=#Territory AND [Recorded]=#SearchedDate AND [Archived]=0
So with checking the day ahead, if the character name is not found in the day ahead, then this is considered to be the old player name for this specific character, else after searching all 5 of the results and they are all found to be present in the day aheads searches, then this name is considered to be new to the table.
Now with the date this application started to run up to today's date which is over 400 individual queries on the database to achieve one goal.
It is also worth a noting that this table grows by 14,400 - 14,500 Rows each and every day.
The overall question to this specific? Is it possible to bring all these queries into less calls onto the database, reduce queries & improve performance?
What you can do to improve performance will be based on what parts of the application stack you can manipulate. Things to try:
Store Less Data - Database content retrieval speed is largely based on how well the database is ordered/normalized and just how much data needs to be searched for each query. Managing a cache of prior scraped pages and only storing data when there's been a change between the current scrape and the last one would guarantee less redundant requests to the db.
Separate specific classes of data - Separating data into dedicated tables would allow you to query a specific table for a specific character, etc... effectively removing one where clause.
Reduce time between queries - Less incoming concurrent requests means less resource contention and faster response times to prior requests.
Use another data structure - The only reason you're using top() is because you need data ordered in some specific way (most-recent, etc...). If you just used a code data structure that keeps the data ordered and still easily-query-able you could then perhaps offload some sql requests to this structure instead of the db.
The suggestions above are not exhaustive, but what you do to improve performance is largely a function of what in the application stack you have the ability to modify.
Recently I created an automated production scheduling tool through Excel that assigns a rank to items being produced in the same process, and then uses that rank in combination with the workload to create a schedule.
It functions exactly the way it is intended to, but due to the large amount of data and it being excel it has very slow performance, which is why I am looking to move the calculations over to SQL.
The general logic is like this:
-Always produce everything from the first day before the second day
-Always produce items from an earlier rank before items from a later rank
You can see how this plays out in the image below, where the line has 21.5 hours today, so items will be produced on day 1 until it equals 21.5, where the remainder is then carried over to day 2 and so on.
I was able to do this in excel using lengthy positional based formulas, but I am trying to think of a way to get the same result in SQL without having to rely on looking at the row above.
I am not sure how to convey something like 'Subtract from the available time production time of higher priority items produced on the same day'.
I apologize if the question is unclear, but any advice would be appreciated.
Image of Production Hours Cascading by Priority and Day
Example of Position-Based Fomula
Thanks to shawnt00, that put me in the right direction. Ultimately I had to modify the case statements a bit to go off of the cumulative total instead, but I was able to get the desired results using a sum() Over (partition by order by ) statement.
I am using SQL assistant and my data brings in snapshots from a huge database in the form of timestamps. Occasionally the snapshots bring in multiples per hour. The data is correct, multiple snapshots do happen from time to time within an hour, not always but it does happen.
I am bringing this into Spotfire and viewing by an hour and when more than one snapshot happens in the hour, the data shows as doubled.
I only want to display one per hour preferably the last(max) timestamp for the hour. Example; for the 7 am hour the data has a snapshot for 7:10 am and one for 7:55 am.
These are correct but I only want to display the last(max) timestamp, 7:55 am in this case. I can't figure the issue out in Spotfire so I am leaning towards a fix in SQL. How can I display only 1 for each hour?
You'd do this similarly to how you'd probably do it in SQL -- using a ranking/rownumber function.
The basic way Rank in Spotfire works is Rank(Order columns, order direction, partitioned columns, tie method)
You need to partition by the combination of Date and Hour, and then sort descending by your timestamp column.
So the code to identify the rows that you want to isolate should be something along the lines of:
Rank([TimestampColumn], "desc", Date([TimestampColumn]), Hour([TimestampColumn]), "ties.method=first")
What you do with it from here is going to depend on how you plan to use the data - for example, you can Limit Data Using Expression and set the code above = 1 which will limit your table accordingly (helpful if you don't want your users to accidentally forget to filter), or you can create a calculated column which turns it into a flag of some form like here:
If(Rank([TimestampColumn], "desc", Date([TimestampColumn]), Hour([TimestampColumn]), "ties.method=first") = 1, "Latest", "Duplicate")
Which allows your users to filter by this property. This way, they have the option to look at the extra rows.
Ultimately, though, if you want to only ever see these rows, and have no use for the earlier records, I'd probably do it in SQL, if you have that ability. This reduces the number of rows you have to load into your analytic.
I am new to Qlikview and after several failed attempts I have to ask for some guidance regarding charts in Qlikview. I want to create Line chart which will have:
One dimension – time period of one month broke down by days in it
One expression – Number of created tasks per day
Second expression – Number of closed tasks per day
Third expression – Number of open tasks per day
This is very basic example and I couldn’t find solution for this, and to be honest I think I don’t understand how I should setup my time period dimension and expression. Each time when I try to introduce more then one expression things go south. Maybe its because I have multiple dates or my dimension is wrong.
Here is my simple data:
http://pastebin.com/Lv0CFQPm
I have been reading about helper tables like Master Callendar or “Date Island” but I couldn’t grasp it. I have tried to follow guide from here: https://community.qlik.com/docs/DOC-8642 but that only worked for one date (for me at least).
How should I setup dimension and expression on my chart, so I can count the ID field if Created Date matches one from dimension and Status is appropriate?
I have personal edition so I am unable to open qwv files from other authors.
Thank you in advance, kind regards!
My solution to this would be to change from a single line per Call with associated dates to a concatenated list of Call Events with a single date each. i.e. each Call will have a creation event and a resolution event. This is how I achieve that. (I turned your data into a spreadsheet but the concept is the same for any data source.)
Calls:
LOAD Type,
Id,
Priority,
'New' as Status,
date(floor(Created)) as [Date],
time(Created) as [Time]
FROM
[Calls.xlsx]
(ooxml, embedded labels, table is Sheet1) where Created>0;
LOAD Type,
Id,
Priority,
Status,
date(floor(Resolved)) as [Date],
time(Resolved) as [Time]
FROM
[Calls.xlsx]
(ooxml, embedded labels, table is Sheet1) where Resolved>0;
Key concepts here are allowing QlikView's auto-conatenate to do it's job by making the field-names of both load statements exactly the same, including capitalisation. The second is splitting the timestamp into a Date and a time. This allows you to have a dimension of Date only and group the events for the day. (In big data sets the resource saving is also significant.) The third is creating the dummy 'New' status for each event on the day of it's creation date.
With just this data and these expressions
Created = count(if(Status='New',Id))
Resolved = count(if(Status='Resolved',Id))
and then
Created-Resolved
all with full accumulation ticked for Open (to give you a running total rather than a daily total which might go negative and look odd) you could draw this graph.
For extra completeness you could add this to the code section to fill up your dates and create the Master Calendar you spoke of. There are many other ways of achieving this
MINMAX:
load floor(num(min([Date]))) as MINTRANS,
floor(num(max([Date]))) as MAXTRANS
Resident Calls;
let zDateMin=FieldValue('MINTRANS',1);
let zDateMax=FieldValue('MAXTRANS',1);
//complete calendar
Dates:
LOAD
Date($(zDateMin) + IterNo() - 1, '$(DateFormat)') as [Date]
AUTOGENERATE 1
WHILE $(zDateMin)+IterNo()-1<= $(zDateMax);
Then you could draw this chart. Don't forget to turn Suppress Zero Values on the Presentation tab off.
But my suggestion would be to use a combo rather than line chart so that the calls per day are shown as discrete buckets (Bars) but the running total of Open calls is a line
Lets say I have a website that sells widgets. I would like to do something similar to a tag cloud tracking best sellers. However, due to constantly aquiring and selling new widgets, I would like the sales to decay on a weekly time scale.
I'm having problems puzzling out how store and manipulate this data and have it decay properly over time so that something that was an ultra hot item 2 months ago but has since tapered off doesn't show on top of the list over the current best sellers. What would be the logic and database design for this?
Part 1: You have to have tables storing the data that you want to report on. Date/time sold is obviously key. If you need to work in decay factors, that raises the question: for how long is the data good and/or relevant? At what point in time as the "value" of the data decayed so much that you no longer care about it? When this point is reached for any given entry in the database, what do you do--keep it there but ensure it gets factored out of all subsequent computations? Or do you archive it--copy it to a "history" table and delete it from your main "sales" table? This is relevant, as it has to be factored into your decay formula (as well as your capacity planning, annual reporting requirements, and who knows what all else.)
Part 2: How much thought has been given to the decay formula that you want to use? There's no end of detail you can work into this. Options and factors to wade through include but are not limited to:
Simple age-based. Everything before the cutoff date counts as 1; everything after counts as 0. Sum and you're done.
What's the cutoff date? Precisly 14 days ago, to the minute? Midnight as of two Saturdays ago from (now)?
Does the cutoff date depend on the item that was sold? If some items are hot but some are not, does that affect things? What if you want to emphasize some things (the expensive/hard to sell ones) over others (the fluff you'd sell anyway)?
Simple age-based decays are trivial, but can be insufficient. Time to go nuclear.
Perhaps you want some kind of half-life, Dr. Freeman?
Everything sold is "worth" X, where the value of X is either always the same or varies on the item sold. And the value of X can decay over time.
Perhaps the value of X decreased by one-half every week. Or ever day. Or every month. Or (again) it may vary depending on the item.
If you do half-lifes, the value of X may never reach zero, and you're stuck tracking it forever (which is why I wrote "part 1" first). At some point, you probably need some kind of cut-off, some point after which you just don't care. X has decreased to one-tenth the intial value? Three months have passed? Either/or but the "range" depends on the inherent valud of the item?
My real point here is that how you calculate your decay rate is far more important than how you store it in the database. So long as the data's there that the formalu needs to do it's calculations, you should be good. And if you only need the last month's data to do this, you should perhaps move everything older to some kind of archive table.
you could just count the sales for the last month/week/whatever, and sort your items according to that.
if you want you can always add the total amonut of sold items into your formula.
You might have a table which contains the definitions of the pointing criterion (most sales, most this, most that, etc.), then for a given period, store in another table the attribution of points for each of the criterion defined in the criterion table. Obviously, a historical table will be used to store the score for each sellers for a given period or promotion, call it whatever you want.
Does it help a little?