SSRS Performance when first opening Browser....

Question

I have a set of reports using SSRS on a dedicated Reports server. Our reports are launched via hyper links on an aspx page. The hyper links open a report (in a new broswer) with selectable paramaters. There is no data when the reports initially load. However, the first time loading a report in the browser takes a significant amount of time. 30 - 50 seconds. Subsequent loading of any of the reports is much faster. It seemes like the server is spinning up objects in the background during the initial load.

Does anyone know the cause of this initial load performace issue?

Thanks

Answer 1

It's exactly what you suspect, Mike - the web server is loading all the required bits'n'pieces. You get the same delay if you try to browse to the SSRS management pages 'the first time' in a day. Once someone has opened a report, or viewed the management pages, the delay goes away.

Answer 2

Two things off the top of my head:

1. Did you test to see how long the query/sproc would execute when developing the report?

2. How much data are you trying to pull over? Is your data being sorted?

If you're using a query, you may want to consider using a stored procedure

Answer 3

SSRS is just another ASP.NET app (see below) that works within the standard IIS environment.

Schedule a report email every 15 minutes to keep it loaded or change IIS settings.

SSRS comprises (from an App perspective):

• A service that deals with schedules, sessions etc
• ReportManager web site that looks like the main entry point to SSRS
• ReportServer web service that does the work, rendering, reporz access etc

You're seeing the double whammy of ReportManager + ReportServer IIS timeouts. Scheduling will only remove the ReportServer timeout.