cView Testing, Installation and Troubleshooting

Our Crystal Reports viewer, cView, gets high marks from our customers. When you see what it does, this is not surprising. But sometimes, folks have problems they attribute to a flaw in cView. The information here will help you solve those problems.

cView Instructions
Qty Pricing | Trial | Ppt | Key Features
Version History | FAQs

Theory

cView is intended to be a report viewer for people who do not already have CR on their machine.

Installation

First, install the trial file. You can find that via a link on the Pricing page. When you get your license key, simply copy it to the same directory where you installed the trial file.

Troubleshooting

The information here will help you solve problems you have with your cView installation.

Problem #1: cView doesn't perform well under test.

Analysis: If someone wants to try to view reports on a machine that already has CR installed, the DLL’s are installed by CR and cView in a different place and version. The only reason they might want to do this is for testing. But it’s not a real test because CR is already on the machine.

Solution: Upgrade any older versions of CRViewer.DLL to the highest version number. Use cView in a real environment. We already know it works, because of the huge installed base on thousands of machines in various environments. There really is no reason to test it.

Problem #2: cView produces reports with old data.

Analysis: Reports with saved data? Think about this! Refresh against the database. Don't  save data with the report. First of all, this gains you nothing. Second, this essentially creates an island of information. Third, it wastes resources like processor time, memory, and disk space. This list could go one well beyond three reasons.

Solution: Don't save data with the report.

Problem #3: cView won't allow a refresh of the data.

Solution: Don't expect cView (or cViewMANAGER or cViewSERVER or any other program) to find the data without being told where the data are.


 

Problem #4: cView is really slow. This is why I save data with the report.

Analysis: cView is not the problem. Saving data with the report is not the solution.

Solution: We already know cView runs plenty fast. So, the problem lies elsewhere, and it will be in one of two places.

1.  If cView seems to be plenty fast when data are saved with the report but otherwise is slow, the problem is in your database or in your network connection. Check your database. See if you need to pack, compress, or do other maintenance. Also, look at the structure. Do you have a huge number of fields per table? Poor database design can slow queries to a crawl.

2. If cView seems slow no matter what, the problem is in the local machine. Check system resources from Task Manager, and see how much RAM you are using. You may need a RAM upgrade. Other causes include too many programs loaded and resident in memory, Microsoft Office Find Fast is on, disk defragmentation is running in the background, hard drives are excessively fragmented, and so on. You may need to evaluate the machine.

 

Problem #5: The cView database drivers won't load.

Analysis: There are no cView database drivers. We can't include the database drivers with our install. They are included as part of the database you have bought.

Solution: Make sure you have the right database drivers for whatever database you are using.

Problem #6: cView users are complaining the reports don't give them the right information, and they can't make adjustments to fix that.

Analysis: The problem is not with the viewing. cView is really a window to your database. If you build a house overlooking a garbage dump, it doesn't matter what you do with the window--it will still see only garbage.

Solution:  Find out what end-users really need, and make sure you have that information in your database and the query the database properly to provide that information.

cView Instructions
Qty Pricing | Trial | Ppt | Key Features
Version History | FAQs