In most cases, subreports are a last resort. Typically they slow things down by adding an extra query to the process. But this week I found that moving some tables to a subreport actually sped things up.

The data came from the fundraising software Raisers’ Edge, which uses data exported to an MDB. The customer had designed a new report and found that it ran for over an hour without completing the query. Nothing looked wrong in the structure so I did some troubleshooting. I started with one table and then added the other tables a few at a time to see which table was the problem. All was fine until I reached the last 17 tables which were all linked back to a single table. We only needed one record from each of the 17 tables and they all had about 500 records.

I was able to add the first three tables without issue, but beyond that the report would slow down more with each table added. It only took a few more tables to realize that we couldn’t add all 17 tables to the report and expect it to complete. I double checked the links, confirmed the indexes were in place and still couldn’t find any cause for the slowdown.

Finally, I removed those tables from the report and created a subreport that included just those tables. I also included the table that linked them all together. The subreport ran instantly both on it’s own and when inserted in the main report. My guess is that the MS Access engine was struggling with the number of joins, so splitting them into two separate queries made it more manageable.