In my last article I explained how the Maximo system uses a single database account for all its SQL statements and how Maximo’s SQL logger could capture more details about the SQL statements being executed.

The BIRT component also uses a single database account but its operations can’t be tracked using the SQL Logger.

The BIRT component is a third party application that the reporting team have integrated into the Maximo architecture.

By default BIRT is configured to use the same database account as the Maximo system.

From a support perspective I recommend reconfiguring Maximo so that it uses its own database account.

There are several reasons for this:

• Maximo generates a lot of SQL statements during its normal operation so if database level tracing is enabled then it can be hard to filter out the BIRT related SQL statements
• Maximo and BIRT SQL statements normally have very different styles. Maximo statements are almost always select * from table where as BIRT SQL statements name specific columns to retrieve
• Using a separate account for BIRT reports means that SQL tracing can be enabled for the BIRT account and far fewer SQL statements will be logged
• A separate account means it is much easier to find cursors that have been leaked by BIRT reports

The Maximo 7.6 report development guide includes instructions in the “Report Developer Database Access” section about how to configure a separate account.