Average Time to Export a Custom Report?

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Hello all. I am trying to compare how my export times compare to others outside my organization. For a single custom report with 8 main fields (45 actual fields altogether) exported to a .MDB file, it takes about 10 minutes to finish. The actual size of the exported file is about 2MB. Is this normal? What are your experiences with Export time length? I hear some people have it take up to two hours?



Thanks for any input!
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  • Marie Stark
    Marie Stark ✭✭✭✭✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 3 Name Dropper Photogenic
    That sounds about right.  It depends on how many records and what type of fields you use. I have reports that take 2 hours or more, but those containover 20,000 records.  I also find that reports where I am exporting attributes take longer.
  • As Marie mentioned it depends on a lot of factors: number of records, number and type of fields, criteria, and even your hardware.  If you are exporting summary fields try having the report do the work instead, if possible (instead of exporting total giving do the calculations in the report).  I've never actually tested if that helps but it sure does make me feel better.  cool  Either way 10 minutes seems like a long time to wait for a report. 



    Give us some info about the fields and we might be able to give more specific advice.



    Josh
  • Josh Bekerman:

    As Marie mentioned it depends on a lot of factors: number of records, number and type of fields, criteria, and even your hardware.  If you are exporting summary fields try having the report do the work instead, if possible (instead of exporting total giving do the calculations in the report).  I've never actually tested if that helps but it sure does make me feel better.  cool  Either way 10 minutes seems like a long time to wait for a report. 



    Give us some info about the fields and we might be able to give more specific advice.



    Josh

    image

    This is the list of Fields in this particular report. There are maybe 3-4 more for Events under Event participations. Thanks for the replies so far!
  • How many constituents?  Also, are you exporting all notes, events, media, memberships for each constituent?  Now that I see the fields 10 minutes doesn't seem that bad. 



    Do you already have the report built?  I'm guessing it's something of a constituent profile, ya?
  • I believe it is roughly 50 constituents, and I believe you are correct as to it being a constituent profile. Where would I check if I am exporting the notes, events, and such for each constituent? I thought it only exported whatever I select in the Output fields? I am leaving the office now, but I will reply as soon as I can tomorrow. Thanks!
  • 50 constituents shouldn't take 10 minutes, but it would when you add on all of their membership records, media info, notes, and event info. 



    It is only exporting the fields you selected in the output, but it's also possible that you are exporting all info of that type of record.  For example, when you select a membership field for the output a window appears asking how many memberships should be exported per constituent, along with the option to select All membership categories or just specific ones.  If you leave the "how many" blank it will export all membership records for all constituents in the export.  If you are an org that has had a membership program for the past 20 years that could add up to a lot of information being exported.  Same thing for notes, media, events, etc. 
  • Josh Bekerman:

      If you are exporting summary fields try having the report do the work instead, if possible (instead of exporting total giving do the calculations in the report).  I've never actually tested if that helps but it sure does make me feel better. 

    Josh, it's interesting that you say that -- we were just in a meeting discussing a pretty big report that takes over an hour to export.  My theory was that the inclusion of several gift summary fields was slowing the export way down, and if she just dumped all the constituents' gifts into the export, removed the summaries, and summarized in the report, it might go faster.  



    So I also don't know the answer yet, but we're going to give it a try and I'll report back if I remember to.
  • Marie Stark
    Marie Stark ✭✭✭✭✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 3 Name Dropper Photogenic
    I would have thought it would take longer, since you have to export every single gift.  Please let us know what you find out!

     
  • I'm wondering if this might also be due to all of the different SQL tables the export is pulling from.  (If you've never done it, take a look at the RE7 schema and, for example, figure out how many tables are involved just to pull phone numbers from preferred addresses.  It's a great way to spend a weekend afternoon. wink)  I'm not a SQL guru (and I don't play one on tv) so I have no idea if this has anything to do with it.  Even so, there's probably nothing you could do about it, but I'll mention it anyway.
  • Marie Stark:

    I would have thought it would take longer, since you have to export every single gift.  Please let us know what you find out!

     

    Will do! 



    I'm also not an SQL guru, but the basic concept is when you export everything, you're saying: give me this person, and find the gifts linked to them and export them too.



    When you do a summary, you're saying, give me this person, and do another query for gifts that fit these criteria, and then add them up and give me that number.  It's a longer process.



    And for some reason dealing with membership and events always takes forever, for us.  I don't know if that's true for everyone.
  • For comparative purposes, I have an export that pulls:



    Constituent info with primary business and education

    Spouse info with primary business and education

    Addressees

    Constituent codes

    Multiple addresses and phones

    Several attributes

    Prospect Ratings

    Proposals and linked actions

    Gifts to other orgs

    Assigned solicitors

    Organization relationships

    Individual relationships

    All gifts, with Campaign, Fund Appeal, Notes

    Current membership

    A bunch of actions

    Notepads of certain types

    Event participations with event info

    First gift with Campaign Fund Appeal (I realize I could calculate this in the report; not sure why I didn't)

    Volunteer type status and job assignments



    EDIT: it's about 135 fields, except that it's exporting into access so it could actually be multiples of each field.



    We use it to run a bio, generally for one person at a time.  I just ran it for a couple of our donors with the most information, and it took anywhere from 15 to 25 seconds for each export.





     
  • James Andrews:



    EDIT: it's about 135 fields, except that it's exporting into access so it could actually be multiples of each field.



    We use it to run a bio, generally for one person at a time.  I just ran it for a couple of our donors with the most information, and it took anywhere from 15 to 25 seconds for each export.





     

    Hi James, 135 fields seems like a lot! How long does it take if you do not do it one person at a time?



    My organization's plan will be to see if we can clean up some static queries (we have over 2500 just in General) and see if that helps at all. Not quite sure if it will help. We do indeed pull all their media info, notes, etc, as the whole point of exporting that particular record is to gather basic constituent data on our donors (I had to verify this with our database administrator).
  • Thomas Luo:

    James Andrews:



    EDIT: it's about 135 fields, except that it's exporting into access so it could actually be multiples of each field.



    We use it to run a bio, generally for one person at a time.  I just ran it for a couple of our donors with the most information, and it took anywhere from 15 to 25 seconds for each export.





     

    Hi James, 135 fields seems like a lot! How long does it take if you do not do it one person at a time?



    My organization's plan will be to see if we can clean up some static queries (we have over 2500 just in General) and see if that helps at all. Not quite sure if it will help. We do indeed pull all their media info, notes, etc, as the whole point of exporting that particular record is to gather basic constituent data on our donors (I had to verify this with our database administrator).

     

    It is a lot, yeah. But the basic concept is a total data dump about a person from RE, so it can go into a report.  So we don't usually do it with big groups of people, and the length of time it takes to export isn't a big issue.
  • Hi Josh, 



    I'm new to managing our RE7 database; where can I view the RE7 schema? We are hosted. Thanks! 

    Josh Bekerman:

    I'm wondering if this might also be due to all of the different SQL tables the export is pulling from.  (If you've never done it, take a look at the RE7 schema and, for example, figure out how many tables are involved just to pull phone numbers from preferred addresses.  It's a great way to spend a weekend afternoon. wink)  I'm not a SQL guru (and I don't play one on tv) so I have no idea if this has anything to do with it.  Even so, there's probably nothing you could do about it, but I'll mention it anyway.



     

     
  • I'm keen to know this too, only we host RE ourselves.
  • According to knowledgebase solution 543924 the schema is not available for hosted clients.



    Also in the same KB solution:

    "You may also access the database schema outside of Blackbaud application by going to C:\\Program Files\\Blackbaud\\[product name]\\Help and opening the file [product name]Schema.chm."



    -Josh
  • Thanks Josh
  • I don't know any more than the previous answers. It does depend on content of export and number of records.


    But I have a weird situation that's similar. A custom report I created that pulls approximated 15,800 records takes 2.5-3 hours to pull. The strange thing is that the first 14,000 records pull in about 50 minutes. Then it takes over an hour for the last 1000 or so records. Why would that be? What makes those last 1000 records so slow? They are young alumni so their constituent records have comparatively less info than the other constituent records. It's driving me bonkers trying to determine why. This is a report that our team  usesfairly often and I'd love to be able to make its run time more manageable.


    Thanks for any tips.

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