I have created a report based on an existing report. In my current report , there are lots of variables which are not in use. So i wanted to delete them. Is there any way to find the variables not in use ?
I do not want to go for manual deletion because it’ll take lot of time and exactly i do not remember also which are not being used. And for manual deletion also it does not allow multi-select.
Any suggestions on this ? It’ll be of great help because it’ll improve the performance of the report.
You’ve already discovered that it’s tedious and manual to do it … well, manually. I’ve looked into creating a SDK solution, but hit a dead end. Because variables can be used in other variables, that kind of iterative parsing would be tricky, but probably doable. Other things were problematic. Depending on how complex a given report block (table) is, not all of the variables can be “seen” in the ReportStructure (that’s a SDK term). Also, variables used in breaks, filters, and sorts can’t be “seen” either. Too many dead ends, so I gave up. I also have a sneaky suspicion that’s why it’s not a built-in functionality.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on that.
Yes, In my report there are complex formulas for each cell , so can’t see in structure view. And the number of variables in the report would be in thousands.
It is always tempting to use an existing report as the starting point for a new one. File, Save As, tweak … we’ve all done it. Over time, this is a bad practice. I think it’s part of what contributes to the “size bloat” as well as “fragility” (unexplainable blue bug crashes) of Reporter documents. We’ve begun the practice of “starting over from scratch” periodically. Not every time of course, but when it’s a fairly complex report that’s been modified several times, in the long run we’ve been MUCH better off. If you use this utility you can copy data providers and needed report variables to the new document fairly quickly, so “starting over” doesn’t really add that much development time. It quickly offsets the time spent responding to help desk calls, for example!
(BOB member since 2002-09-19)