BiLog: Multitasking...ROS Best Practices of Excluding Attributes

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Can you please put the refrigerator back in the milk?   As my family stared at me in perplexed amusement and enthusiastic anticipation in how they were going to fit the refrigerator in a gallon of milk – I soon realized that multi-tasking had once again gotten the best of me.  In my quest to get dinner on the table, bake cookies for a school event, find the top to my coffee travel mug, and feed the dog, my words got tangled.  Multi-tasking had once again proven to be a performance disabler  leading to burnt cookies and spilled milk.    

Likewise, your users may multi-task when using Maximo, and without thinking through the implications of their actions, can cause performance impacts.   In this previous Bilog entry, report security best practices were reviewed, which included granting varying levels of report security dependant on the user’s skill sets and job requirements. Another best practice you can implement is on your ROS, Report Object Structures.  As the building blocks to multiple data analysis features in Version 7,  ROS enable you to select fields from multiple categories (objects) for your ad hoc reports, and can also be used as the meta data within Cognos.  

When you create a ROS in the Object Structure application, the persistent fields within each object are enabled.  However, many of the persistent fields within each object are not typically utilized by end users, and they can also be repeated multiple times within the various object.  (For Example, asset number is contained within both the asset and work order objects)

Therefore, it is a best practice to reduce the potentially high amounts of fields that the user can add to or filter through for his ad hoc report by using the Object Structure Action of Excluding/Including fields.   Without this functionality, the user may simply ‘add all’ of the database attributes to his reports, which can contribute to performance concerns, and lead to un-manageable report content that the user will either discard, or spend an unnecessary amount of time sorting thru. 


This is shown in the screen shot here.   For the selected ROS, the 'Exclude/Include Fields’ Action is selected from the menu.