Performance - Where it counts.

A good report does magic with large data.
It is supposed to take millions of records, and summarise them into a visual entity that transforms into something meaningful for the user.

Recently, in one of my sessions, a client wanted me to focus on improving performance for a specific report in his system.
Report was taking 5 minutes to generate, clogged the system's database, and was comprised of one of the largest SQL statements I've seen in my life.
Instead of starting to spend hours and hours trying to optimise and dig deep, something that would cost my client a lot of money, I asked him a simple question:

- Who produces this report, and how often does it happen?

Turns out it was a weekly (Even monthly in some customers) report, printed and handed out to a manager.
Assigning a periodic process running on a backup database, and automatically sending the result via mail to the manager saved a lot of money and headache to my client.

Performance is important, but you should always focus on improving it where it makes a real difference.

Do it where it counts!