Oracle^® Business Intelligence Server Administration Guide > Administering the Oracle BI Server Query Environment >

Server Configuration and Tuning

Performance is an extremely important consideration in every decision support system, but it is particularly important in systems that allow queries over the Web. This section describes some important considerations for improving query performance with the Oracle BI Server. This is an overview topic. For details, see Oracle Business Intelligence Infrastructure Installation and Configuration Guide

NQSConfig.INI File Parameters

The NQSConfig.INI file contains configuration and tuning parameters for the Oracle BI Server. There are parameters to configure disk space for temporary storage, set sort memory buffer sizes, set cache memory buffers, set virtual table page sizes, and a number of other configuration settings that allow you to take full advantage of your hardware's capabilities.

For more information about the NQSConfig.INI file parameters, refer to Oracle Business Intelligence Infrastructure Installation and Configuration Guide.

Aggregate Tables

You should use aggregate tables to improve query performance. Aggregate tables contain precalculated summarizations of data. It is much faster to retrieve an answer from an aggregate table than to recompute the answer from thousands of rows of detail. The Oracle BI Server uses aggregate tables automatically, if they have been properly specified in the repository.

For more information and examples of setting up aggregate navigation in a repository, refer to Setting Up Fragmentation Content in an Oracle BI Repository for Aggregate Navigation.

Query Caching

Enabling query caching causes the Oracle BI Server to store query results for reuse by subsequent queries. Caching can dramatically improve the apparent performance of the system for users. For more information about query caching concepts and setup, refer to Query Caching in the Oracle BI Server.

Tune and Index Underlying Databases

The Oracle BI Server sends queries to databases. For the queries to return in a timely manner, the underlying databases need to be configured, tuned, and indexed correctly. You might need to work with the DBAs of the underlying databases to help identify any problem areas where database tuning is in order.

Different database products will have different tuning considerations. If there are queries that return slowly from the underlying databases, you can capture the SQL of the queries in the query log, then provide them to the DBA for analysis. For more information about configuring query logging on your system, refer to Administering the Query Log.