Newbie looking for guidance

Hello!
I inherited ownership of the BIRT iServer platform. Long story short, there are a lot of things I do not understand about the BIRT environment, I am doing fine generating new reports and troubleshooting the old ones, but I believe the platform is not being used to its full potential and because of failures, it is percieved as unreliable.
Besides the manuals, is there a source where concepts like "what is iServer factory service" or even simple questions like how many concurrent reports can I run"
 
Hope there's help out there

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JFreeman

Do you know if you have an active support maintenance contract for your iServer environment?
If so, you should have or be able to get access to the Support Knowledge base which I would highly recommend as a starting point.
 
Resources such as these forums are also useful.
 
There are various different factories and processes that will be running within your iServer depending on the version, how it is being used, and what types of reports you are running.
 
Without more details about your environment, the most basic answer to your question about an iServer factory is it's a process used by the iServer to generate reports.
 
If you can provide the following information, I can give you a more detailed answer:
 
- What version of the iServer are you running?
- What types of reports are being run (eReports, BIRT Reports, Spreadsheet reports)?
- Are the reports being scheduled as background jobs or run transiently to be viewed immediately?
 
Regarding the question about running concurrent reports, this will depend on your license agreement.

aolvera

Thank you for the reply.
 
The iServer environment is iServer 11SP4, Used for BIRT reports (data sources are SQL tables). Not sure about the active support maintenance contract (most probably not) but for the environment we have these licenses:
 

The license for this system is a named-user license.

The CPU core limit is

4

Licensed for: Production License

The license for this system is locked to the nodes in the iServer system

Listed below are the Work Units licensed:

<ul><li>BIRT Online ( 8 )</li>
</ul>

<ul><li>BIRT Factory ( 1 )</li>
</ul>

<ul><li>BIRT 360 ( 8 )</li>
</ul>

<ul><li>BIRT Data Analyzer ( 8 )</li>
</ul>

Listed below are the options currently licensed:

<ul><li>BIRT Option (10 users)</li>
</ul>

<ul><li>BIRT Interactive Viewer Option (10 users)</li>
</ul>

<ul><li>BIRT 360 Option (10 users)</li>
</ul>

<ul><li>BIRT Data Analyzer Option (20 users)</li>
</ul>

Listed below are the options currently not licensed:

<ul><li>e.Report (Actuate Basic Report) Option</li>
</ul>

<ul><li>BIRT SpreadSheet Option</li>
</ul>

<ul><li>e.Analysis Option</li>
</ul>

<ul><li>e.Report Page Level Security Option</li>
</ul>

<ul><li>Actuate Query Option</li>
</ul>

<ul><li>Multi-Tenant (Named User) Option</li>
</ul>

<ul><li>BIRT SmartSheet Security Option</li>
</ul>

<ul><li>BIRT Studio Option</li>
</ul>

<ul><li>BIRT Page Level Security Option</li>
</ul>

<ul><li>e.Report Data Connector Option</li>
</ul>

Your license does not have an expiration date.

JFreeman

Thank you for the additional details.
 
To start, it is important to understand the core processes of your iServer which will also help in answer your question about an iServer factory.
 
Processes:
 
- pmd11: This process management daemon for the iServer. This process is responsible for the initial startup and final shutdown of the iServer and starts the encycsrvr11 process.
 
- encycsrvr11: This process is the core process for the iServer and will start all subsequent processes. It also handles the SOAP requests.
 
- jencycsrvr11: This process handles all of the metadata related operations for the iServer.
 
- jfctsrvr11: This is the java factory server process for the iServer. This process is responsible for the running of scheduled background jobs.
 
- jsrvr11: This is the process responsible for handling the running of transient jobs and viewing requests for BIRT reports.
 
- If you are using the embedded tomcat/information console, you will also have a java process running.
 
Focusing on the execution and viewing of reports, two of these processes will be tied to factories configured within the configuration console of your iServer(The factory settings can also be found within your acserverconfig.xml). The jfctsrvr11 and the jsrvr11 processes. Each additional factory added to the configuration will create an additional corresponding process.
 
Going into your specific license, you have 8 BIRT Online and 1 BIRT Factory. The BIRT Online corresponds the transient running/viewing of reports (jsrvr11) and the BIRT Factory corresponds to the running of scheduled background jobs (jfctsrvr11).
 
The jsrvr11 process that handles BIRT Online requests allows for multi threading to handle the requests. One BIRT Online process can handle up to 8 concurrent threads for online requests. Therefore, the maximum BIRT Online factories you can have running is 1.
 
The jfctsrvr11 process on the other hand only uses a single thread in order to fully dedicate all available resource in the background generation of the report. Your license of 1 BIRT factory means you can have a maximum of 1 BIRT Factory running for background jobs.
 
With this information in mind and without going into great detail about every situation, you can essentially have 8 transient requests/views and 1 background job all running simultaneously. Keep in mind this is exactly concurrent requests. More requests than this can be made and they will be placed in the queue to be processed when the resources become available.
 
You should also keep in mind there may also be limitations on the system for concurrent requests based on the physical hardware available for the system (CPU, RAM, etc.).
 
Let me know if you have any questions on the information.

Heyjee

Hi everybody, 
I would like some advices too.
 
This is our licence configuration :
 

Listed below are the Work Units licensed:

<ul><li>BIRT Online ( 3 )</li>
</ul>

<ul><li>BIRT Factory ( 0 )</li>
</ul>
 
So we cannot run scheduled background jobs ?
 
Currently when I try to run scheduled report, they always go in pending status.
I have to restart the service every time to end the task.
 
Thank you in advance for your answer.

Clement Wong

No, unfortunately, you do not have the BIRT Factory license (you have 0 work units) so you will not be able to schedule any background jobs.
 
If you would like a Sales Representative to contact you regarding a license upgrade, please PM me with your contact information.