BusinessObjects InfoView is a thin client app for viewing your BI information. This can include reports, dashboards, scorecards, etc. A user can open any web browser to navigate through their information and personalize how they view that data.
I've been researching the details of InfoView lately and I see quite a few users having performance issues with it. This ranges from long login times to delays when opening folders. Considering that InfoView is a thin client app that runs in the browser, you might assume that it would give you quick response times. But there are various areas that can cause performance bottlenecks which result in a poor user experience. The following is a checklist of items I found for correcting these issues and improving InfoView's performance:
* It's common knowledge that Microsoft doesn't do much to optimize their browser performance. For example, both Firefox and Google Chrome have optimized java engines, while Microsoft has publicly stated that they don't think this is important. Consequently, your user's choice of browser can impact performance. Using IE 6/7 can give you the worst performance of them all. Using Firefox, Chrome or IE 8 is the best choice.
* It's also important to disable unnecessary services running on the BOBJ server. They can consume resources. In the CCM, click on the manage server button and stop any unwanted services.
* Set DEP (Data Execution Prevention) for Windows essential programs only. See this link for more info on DEP: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875352. The same applies for virus checkers. Disable it for BO specific folders b/c temporary files are constantly being created while using InfoVIew.
* IIS uses application pools that that shutdown by default after 20 minutes of being idle. When the app pool is restarted, there is a slowdown with caching the up-front worker processes. Disabling the auto-shutdown of the app pool after 20 minutes will prevent users from having to wait during the initial caching process throughout the day.
* Use NAT on the CSS load balancer to mask the IP addresses.
* A more costly solution can be to use Citrix or Window Terminal Server and have it right next to the BO servers.
