Why is my database so big? Understanding the DBStats report and what it can do for you. (Part 2.5 Getting the DBStats report to run)

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I want to step out of my planned blog updates to circle back to some questions I received on the first ones.

The biggest question is on running the DBStats report to begin with. Sometimes when you run kick off DBStats from the ui, it runs and runs and runs, and never comes back. If you don't get a report back it makes analyzing the report moot.

This is what is going on. When you run the DBStats report, it goes out and runs a number of queries against the database to gather information. Then it takes the results and formats them. Once it is done formatting, it returns the entire report to the web browser to be displayed. However, sometimes the ui will time out and by the time the report is done, it can't be returned to screen. The main thing that takes time is the database queries. This is even worse considering that one of the main reasons you run the DBStats report to to get information about a database that is too large and is not responding quickly. So the more likely you are to want to see the DBStats report, the more likely it will time out.

There is a way around this. You can schedule the report to run in a business process and then send or drop off the report somewhere you can get to it. To do this:

1. Go to Operations > Reports

2. Beside Schedule Reports, click on Go!

3. Select DBStats as the report and PDF as the format. (I prefer PDF as the most readable of the formats.)

4. Enter the information about where you want the report to go. I usually suggest file system because not everyone has an SMTP server set up. But if you have one, you can set this to send you the report via email.

5. Select Do Not Run on a Schedule. You can schedule this, but most often you want to run this on demand rather than on a schedule. Do Not Run on a Schedule creates the schedule but leaves it disabled. You can turn it on later if you want.

6. Go to the last screen and click Finish

7. To run the report go to Business Process > Manager

8. Search for DBStats_ScheduleBP

9. Click on Execution Manager and then Execute and run the DBStats_ScheduleBP process.

Any time that you want to run the report, just kick off the DBStats_ScheduleBP process. It will put the file in the directory you specify or email it to you.

When this runs as a business process the ui timeout doesn't come into play and you don't have to worry about it.