How to Display the Elapsed Processing Time of a Report in SSRS
The amount of time it takes to process a report can be useful information for performance auditing. Although there isn’t a built-in field in SQL Server Reporting Services that holds the elapsed processing time, it’s easy to create this functionality using the ExecutionTime built-in field and the Now VB.Net function in SSRS.
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The ExecutionTime is the moment when report processing starts. When used in the expression of a textbox, the Now function returns the time when the report is rendered. Rendering comes right after report processing. This means we can easily calculate the processing time simply by subtracting Now from ExecutionTime.
Function Implementation
One way to implement the logic is to put it into a custom function and then call the function from the expression of a textbox. This is clean, the code is easy to read and so it’s also easy to maintain. The downside is that you have more than one component to the solution; so, if you want to copy this functionality into other reports, you’ll have to copy and paste both the function and the textbox. My preference would be for this approach because “clean and easy to maintain” usually leads to smoother running programs!
If you’ve never created custom code in SSRS before, read my article on Using Custom Code in SSRS to see how it’s done. Then create the following function that will both calculate the elapsed processing time and return it as a string in the format mm:ss.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | Function ProcessingTime(StartTime As Date, EndTime as Date) As String Dim ElapsedMins As Integer = DateDiff(DateInterval.Minute, StartTime, EndTime) mod 60 Dim ElapsedSecs As Integer = DateDiff(DateInterval.Second, StartTime, EndTime) mod 60 Return ElapsedMins.ToString() & ":" & Right("0" & ElapsedSecs.ToString(), 2) End Function |
Single Expression Implementation
Another way to implement the logic is to use a single expression in a textbox (right-click the textbox and select Expression…) that does everything. This is a bit messier, the expression has a whole bunch of things piled into it making it harder to read and maintain, but all you have to do to put it into another report is copy just that one textbox containing the following expression, which also displays the results in the format mm:ss.
1 2 | =DateDiff(DateInterval.Minute, Globals!ExecutionTime, Now()) mod 60 & ":" & Right("0" & DateDiff(DateInterval.Second, Globals!ExecutionTime, Now()) mod 60, 2) |
Enjoy!
Peter Avila
SQL Server Instructor – Interface Technical Training
Phoenix, AZ
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Hi Peter,
Thanks for this code, it’s a good starting point, however the reported timing seems shorter than reality. I suspect it is not bringing back the true report Execution Duration as the Now() function doesn’t seemed to be invoked at the end of report processing, but rather when it is called in the Function or when SSRS gets around to dealing with that expression field. It would be good if there were some Event in SSRS where the report has ended and you could execute code like a lot of VBA applications have.
GREAT !! Thank you!