AX SSRS - Regular Processing (SRSReportDataProviderBase) VS PreProcessing (SrsReportDataProviderPreProcess) (fixes timeout issues on reporting)

Sometimes in AX we need to create reports that exceed the default run-time limits defined in AX (default is 10minutes) because of the amount of data we are either calculating or returning. As discussed in one of my other posts (AX SSRS Report times out after 10 minutes) one of the ways to overcome this is to change the config files of the client/ssrs server but another way to overcome this limit and improve the speed in which a report can be ran is changing your data provider to extend the class 'SrsReportDataProviderPreProcess' instead of the regular type of 'SRSReportDataProviderBase'

I found this great blog entry over at msdn (click here) with this nice graphic shown below that explains the differences between the two. But long story short the difference is we are utilizing the aos to generate the data then handing the results to ssrs rather than handing the logic to ssrs and letting it generate the data. By doing this we can bypass the time out that is defined in ssrs because the data is already generated before we hand it off and we can improve runtime because it is now generating the data on the aos server.


Regular processing:



Pre-processing:

In order to switch from the regular process we need to make the following changes:

1. On the table that is returned as a dataset to the report make the following changes
1. Created by - Yes
2. CreatedTransactionId - Yes
3. TableType - Regular
2. Change the DP class so it extends SrsReportDataProviderPreProcess
3. Within the DP class.processReport() method add the following code reportData.setConnection(this.parmUserConnection()); where reportData is the table that is returned as a dataset within your report
4. Execute a incremental cil
5. Open the SSRS report and hit refresh on the dataset. At this point you should see the field 'createdTransactionId' added to the available field.
6. Deploy report
7. Security Note: For your security object it is good to note that when using this preprocessing method you need to add the DPClass.processReport() method to the Server methods node in the privilege associated with the report