BusinessObjects Board

BIAR file keeps growing every week

Hi all! I’m trying to figure out what is going on with our weekly BIAR backup file. I hope you guys can help me with this.

Every week we manually create a BIAR file with the Import Wizard. Basically, we select everything and start the backup. Now, I noticed when I first started a year ago that files were 2.5 gig (or so). Now, a year later, files are 3.5 gig (or so). Each week the file grows a little bit bigger.

Now, last week I’ve cleaned up the file repository by deleting old instances of scheduled reports (deleted about 4000 out of 5500). I hoped this would get the BIAR back to 2.5GB. Alas, no joy.

We use mainly webi reporting on an Edge installation. The number of created/available reports does not increase every week. All other factors are more or less constant (e.g. number of universes, connections, access levels etc).

Can someone point me in the right direction of how I can get this growing BIAR under control (and preferably smaller)?


richardbremer (BOB member since 2011-07-13)

1 GB growth over 1 year does not seem that big!? The following points are just some of my thoughts…

[list]While no apparent growth of webi reports week to week, how about over the year?

What about the growth of data in refreshed queries/reports saved over the year?

What about growth of input/output filestore locations week to week? Different growth rates in each filestore may indicate the main source of growth.

Are users copying content into their personal folders to ‘preserve’ data?

Perhaps use the activity universe to find out who is doing what, and then ask them what they are doing (in a nice way!)

Are users saving non-webi reports/content to Infoview? I seem to think that the activity universe only monitors certain types of documents.[/list]


Darth Services :uk: (BOB member since 2007-11-20)

Try and deploy the wid scanner to find objects with large amounts of data stored in them…

BTW, from experience, it is people saving data into report design (the input FRS) that causes the issue here. I actively encourage users to purge data from their reports before saving,


jemstar :ireland: (BOB member since 2006-03-30)

Yes, and to follow up James’ point, if these reports are say YTD reporting then each week the volume of data in the will likely increase.


Nick Daniels :uk: (BOB member since 2002-08-15)

Thx, I’m definitly going to look into these matters. Most reports indeed contain data (and we have a lot of YTD reports…), so getting the users to purge this might be beneficial.

Also, I will include a scan of those personal folders. I never looked into those, but can indeed be a source of datagrowth.

@jemstar: thx, I will download this and see what comes up.


richardbremer (BOB member since 2011-07-13)