I am implementing a matrix report in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2. There are about 37 rows and 10 columns where each cell has an Indicator graphic (so about 370 cells). The report shows loading for a few seconds but then freezes for about 2-3 minutes before the report pops up. Other matrix reports without the indicators seem to render just fine. Is there some way to improve the performance of reports such as these with many indicators in each cell?

you could replace the indicators with Wingdings characters if that is suitable - you could have an additional column in the data set with the character after you calculate what the character should be, then another one for the colour. I've implemented a report like this in SSRS 2005 with 18 indicators in columns and much more than 37 rows and performance was just fine - so it may be worth a go. Boyan Penev --- http://www.bp-msbi.com

Hi Jeff, Or please cache the report, this will improve the performance too. For more information, please see: Caching Reports (SSRS): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms155927.aspx If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask. Thanks, Jin ChenJin Chen - MSFT

I would also suggest the approach that Boyan has suggested, since it would be light on the reporting engine. Here is an example of how I used it:- http://road-blogs.blogspot.com/2010/04/dashboards-in-ssrs-2008.htmlCheers, Jason P.S. : Please click the 'Mark as Answer' button if a post solves your problem! :)

And my post on the topic as well. http://www.bp-msbi.com/2008/10/colourful-reports-with-no-pictures-use/ Boyan Penev --- http://www.bp-msbi.com

Thank you all for the quick response. I did try caching the report but, as I suspected, that was not the problem. The MDX query executes in a few seconds. When running the report and observing the task manager performance and networking tab, at the point the browser appears to hang, CPU usage spikes with very little networking activity. As such, I suspect this may be the rendering in the browser that is causing the problem. I have used the fonts option in the past under SSRS 2005 and it did work well but was hoping to take advantage of the more attractive indicators in 2008 R2. The fonts are limited as what I am trying to display are indicators representing quartiles. There is a Lucidia Unicode font I can use which are mini pie charts to accomplish the same. Excel 2010 has similar indicators and when deployed to Excel Services it renders just fine with the same amount of data. I need to stick with SSRS for now though because it all needs to be able to print in a single reports. I suspect at this point I step back and look at using a chart to display the same data rather than a matrix. Thanks again for all your help and hopefully this is something that can be addressed in a later release or even SP.

Jeff, This is known issue with IE 7.0 browser. You can try IE 8.0 or IE 9.0 beta version. You can see the difference in rendering time taken. Microsoft has also come out update patch for SQL server 2008 R2 which takes care of initial Report rendering. You can check the Updates for SQL Server 2008 R2. I think this information will help you. Following is the link for Update http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=2345451&kbln=en-us Regards, Dheeraj

Hi, I am encountering the same problem, we have migrate a server from RS 2005 to RS 2008 R2, and some report's rendering is very slow, freezing for 1 or 2 minutes. I tried to delete and created again matrix in Visual Studio 2008, without results. When I remove the jump to report in cell's properties, report's rendering is very fast, like in RS 2005. The problem seems to come from the drill in cell. We can't install IE8, because we have near 50 000 computers, and we can't use cache properties because reports have to be refreshed oftently. Is this problem have been fixed in a patch ? Regards, Alexandre.