We recently upgraded to BusObj v5.1.7. A document that was capable of being exported to PDF format in less than 20 minutes (it’s a very large document) now takes in excess of 1.5 hours! 
Any ideas about what might be causing such an awful change? 
cre907 
(BOB member since 2003-07-15)
More info:
The original .rep file is 524KB, the resulting .pdf file is 7956KB. Kinda extreme, isn’t it?? Even for Adobe?
cre907 
(BOB member since 2003-07-15)
I’ve got the same thingt on 5.1.6… PDF is about 2.7MB, the .rep is 1.6MB… but it take just under 90 minutes to produce… the users are pulling thier hair out, because I’m yet to come up with a solution… I’ll be interested to hear if anyone else has run it to this.
MBradbourne (BOB member since 2003-08-28)
I do have the same problem? Any one know the answer ?
Mathi (BOB member since 2003-04-19)
Stab in the dark, is the row by row auto fit (format / cell from menu. Alignment tab) turned on for any column? If so, try turning it off.
SteveBickerton 
(BOB member since 2002-08-15)
You wouldn’t happen to have any graphics or charts in your report?
I’ll take a look at the smaller report (if possible) to see if there’s something in the format of the report that could be causing the issue.
I’ve only had timing issues with reports that included a number of graphics… and it can account for the report size (bloat) as well. REP files will be smaller since the charts are created on the fly, but they will be fully rendered out in the PDF file.
digpen (BOB member since 2002-08-15)
digpen- are you a Mac addict? I noticed your .mac homepage.
SteveBickerton (BOB member since 2002-08-15)
Possibly. 
I’ve been a Mac user for years. I use it for all of my documenting needs, and only revert back to a PC when absolutely necessary (though I’m finding fewer and fewer instances to have to do that).
Not to segue this conversation, but my next project will be to create training “videos” for the less complex tutorials.
digpen (BOB member since 2002-08-15)
This is an issue that I encountered many times…I never found a solution and BO tech support didn’t help at all on this issue. I had reports that took a weekend (72 hours) to export. I don’t know what to tell you.
Justin Grimme (BOB member since 2004-03-03)
Just out of curiosity, how long do the report take to be printed on a real printer? because you can use something like PDFCreator to make PDF out of almost any application able to print.
pabloj (BOB member since 2003-03-27)
Interesting!
We are embarking on producing some very large reports via a burst macro which will create the reports in BCA and save them as PDF and then distribute them to our intranet server for our users to pick up.
We have found that if the report has a large number of sections, it takes a lot longer to generate the PDF. Our structure has 350 teams distributed in 100 groups across 24 offices. THe complex report we have created takes about 25 minutes to create the PDF on my PIII 733mHz desktop. The report is 1.5Mb the PDF is about 17Mb. When we apply the bursting formula we get approx 900mb pdfs generated every 8 minutes, this time includes reformatting to fit the Office filter( running on the server). total burst time 184 minutes!!! 
refresh time 5 dps under 5 seconds
We are now splitting the report into separate documents On a tab by tab basis. The simpler tabs complete the burst in 8 minutes. The worst report is the Team summary which takes just over 30 minutes. and is 4 sections deep with 10 tables built from 5 DPs. This creates nearly 900 bookmarks in the PDF.
The servers are Compaq Dual Xeon 800s with 4 gb RAM and 6 17.8 GB disks.
Oh yes, the servers Go to 100% utilisation during the bursting, not surprising really, but it has our IT infrastructure people tearing their hair out.
How do you max out the server, run the Daily and the Weekly version simultaneously? They have turned off the alarm because the server is at 100% so much of the time. (we have applied the registry fixes as well).
I know this hasn’t helped you much. Good luck. 
G.E.Davies 
(BOB member since 2003-01-20)
All:
Save As PDF option takes too long time only certain machines. In one of the user m/c, the SaveAs PDF option took nearly 1 hour. But in my machine just 7 min. (version 5.1.3)
I’m not sure which m/c setting causing the issue. Please let me know if anyone knows the answer for this
Thanks & Regards
Mathi
Mathi (BOB member since 2003-04-19)
are you doing this in BCA? We had a similar problem when we installed 5.1.5. PDF, and VB filtering took for ever. When we went to BCA 5.5 (sorry I can’t see our server right now to confirm the exact version), the problem went away. Apparently the calc engine for BO changed in 5.1.4 or so.
SteveBickerton (BOB member since 2002-08-15)
Mathi -
One possible reason could be the m/c configurations - (Processor / RAM etc…) . Are both the same on your m/c and the user m/c ?
Anjan Roy (BOB member since 2002-07-10)
Anjan:
The user m/c is good one in terms of Processor /disk space/RAM… I feel some other setting causing the issue.
Thanks & Regards
Mathi
Mathi (BOB member since 2003-04-19)
I am just starting to analyze this issue myself.
I have 2 PCs side by side. Both run Win XP.
One has 512 Mb memory and runs full-client BO 5.1.3.
The other has 256 Mb memory and runs full-client BO 5.1.8.
Dong a File -> Save As PDF interactively same time on both.
Filter and ExportAsPDF via VBA macro takes much longer (maybe 5 times longer). I have not yet isolated the time lag to just the ExportAsPDF method.
Also on 5.1.8 version, data in a footer is misaligned compared to the version on the 5.1.3 PC.
The amount of memory in each PC may be a factor. If each version uses a different Adobe driver then this will also factor into the equation.
Irwin Miller (BOB member since 2002-08-16)
Hello,
I have VERY similar experience. I add “timers” before/after “refresh” and before/after “SaveAsPDF” in the macro and my results are:
Before Refresh: 8:02:25 AM
After Refresh: 8:04:06 AM
Before ExportAsPDF: 8:04:06 AM-\Capsbi.ocgov.com\pdf\test\FretQtrReport_3-15-2004(289)
After ExportAsPDF: 8:09:45 AM
Before Refresh: 8:09:46 AM
After Refresh: 8:10:37 AM
Before ExportAsPDF: 8:10:37 AM-\Capsbi.ocgov.com\pdf\test\FretQtrReport_3-15-2004(291)
After ExportAsPDF: 8:23:30 AM
Before Refresh: 8:23:30 AM
After Refresh: 8:23:53 AM
Before ExportAsPDF: 8:23:53 AM-\Capsbi.ocgov.com\pdf\test\FretQtrReport_3-15-2004(292)
After ExportAsPDF: 8:41:02 AM
Before Refresh: 8:41:02 AM
After Refresh: 8:41:43 AM
Before ExportAsPDF: 8:41:43 AM-\Capsbi.ocgov.com\pdf\test\FretQtrReport_3-15-2004(293)
After ExportAsPDF: 8:59:52 AM
Before Refresh: 8:59:52 AM
After Refresh: 9:00:13 AM
Before ExportAsPDF: 9:00:13 AM-\Capsbi.ocgov.com\pdf\test\FretQtrReport_3-15-2004(294)
After ExportAsPDF: 9:18:06 AM
Before Refresh: 9:18:06 AM
After Refresh: 9:18:28 AM
Before ExportAsPDF: 9:18:28 AM-\Capsbi.ocgov.com\pdf\test\FretQtrReport_3-15-2004(295)
After ExportAsPDF: 9:34:29 AM
Before Refresh: 9:34:29 AM
After Refresh: 9:35:06 AM
Before ExportAsPDF: 9:35:06 AM-\Capsbi.ocgov.com\pdf\test\FretQtrReport_3-15-2004(298)
After ExportAsPDF: 9:49:16 AM
Exit-FIN
Note that for each refresh I used different sets of input parameters.
The situation is even worse if I schedule to run the job using the BCA.
Cheers? 
tyltyl (BOB member since 2003-03-28)
I have seen a similar issue with applying filters and saving sections as PDF files. This is why we are still on 5.1.2 for the BCA. I added a bug with support but it has never been updated.
Basically, I’ve seen two results:
When moving to 5.1.5 version of BCA, the time it takes to produce PDF files changes from 5/minute to 1/minute. Same macro, same box, etc.
On any version, as the report processes the macro, the memory utilized keeps growing until it uses all available server memory (up to 500MB)! This causes the rate of production to gradually slow until either the macro finishes or BCA times out.
The bug registered relates to #1, and I’ve seen evidence of others experiencing #2.
For those refreshing and saving multiple times, have you tried chaining several reports together or possibly refreshing once with all data and then filtering to produce the individual files?
Chris
cfachris (BOB member since 2003-09-03)
cfscharis wrote:"For those refreshing and saving multiple times, have you tried chaining several reports together or possibly refreshing once with all data and then filtering to produce the individual files? "
I have only tried to chain several reports together. We’re using BO 5.1.5.
Also, I have been experiencing #2 a lot.
I have encountered another issue with “SaveAsPDF” as well. The hyperlinks on each report can be misplaced after the translation process, please see my previous postings in BOB for details. In a nutshell, the real location of hyperlink is placed somewhere else rather than at the location where the url character string represents on a PDF page. I can see their “real locations” under the Adobe Acrobat 6.0 professional. I need to move the footer and the url string in BO by a very lengthy trial and error process to get them overlapped on top of each other. It’s a drag! Finally, I decided using WebI for report distributions rather than PDF and e-mails route.
tyltyl (BOB member since 2003-03-28)
Here is my final analysis on comparing ‘saving to PDF’ from within full-client version 5.1.3 and 5.1.8 using VBA macro method ExportAsPDF.
Note that this test was not run on BCA.
Using Report method (borpt.ExportAsPDF) shows pretty much identical time durations.
Using Document method (boDoc.ExportAsPDF) with about 5 report tabs - time duration jumped by a factor of 2.5 to 5 times when comparing same report in 5.1.1 and 5.1.8.
The change in calc engine (5.1.3 -> 5.1.8) as demonstrated in the ForceCompute method jumped from 1 second to 6 seconds consistently.
Does anyone know at which BO version (1.4 .5 .6 .7 .8) the impact of the calc engine change became so evident in performance ?
Irwin Miller (BOB member since 2002-08-16)