Frequently Asked Questions for the Cougar Mountain Accounting Software

Introduction

Below are frequently asked questions about R&R Report Writer and R&R SQL Edition / ARPEGGIO.  Note that some R&R Report Writer FAQs apply to the R&R SQL Edition /ARPEGGIO Report Designer as well.  Use your Browser's Find function to search this page for keywords.

R&R Report Writer

Q)  When I run R&R Report Writer, I frequently get the error "File is in use do you want to make a copy?" when I try to open a report. This happens even when there is no one else using R&R. What might be wrong.

A)  If you are running on a Novell network and running Novell client version 4.83, you need to update to 4.83 SP1.  This should correct the problem. 

Q)  When I run R&R Report Writer in a multi-user configuration, why do I get the message "No Available Network User ID"?

A)  Either all available user ids are in use or else the program did not exit properly the last time it was run, and the user id is still marked "in use".  

If you did not exit properly, you need to manually unlock the id to proceed.  To do so, run RRWUSERS.EXE from the program directory if running a Windows version, or RRUSERS.EXE running a DOS version.  On a network, you will need to have read and write rights to the file containing the serial number(s).  For Windows versions this is RRWUSERS.DAT, for DOS versions it is RRUSERS.DAT.  

If all user ids are actually in use, you will need additional user ids for each concurrent user who will be accessing the program.  You can easily purchase and install additional serial numbers (user ids).  Contact Liveware Publishing Sales at CompanyPhone for more information.

Q)  I know I should have multiple pages of data yet I’m seeing only one page.  What am I doing wrong?

A)  Check the File Print dialog to make sure there isn’t an Ending Page number defined.

Q)  When I call the R&R Report Writer Runtime ActiveX control (OCX) from my application, nothing happens - why?  [If you display the error message using the Display Error property, you may see a message such as "Cannot execute viewer exe: error code 2", or "...error code 8".]

A)  The OCX cannot find the runtime executable, RRWRUN.EXE.  You should create an RRW.INI file in the Windows root directory, or edit the file if it already exists, to include the following line under the Default section, replacing x:\mydir with the full path to the directory containing RRWRUN.EXE:

[Defaults]
ProgDir32=x:\mydir

Another possibility, if you are running under Windows NT, is that if you install NT Service Pack 5 the problem will go away.

Q)  Why is my File Print menu choice disabled (i.e. grayed-out?)

A)  You must have a printer installed on your computer in order for R&R Report Writer to format the report correctly.  Go to your Windows Start menu, select Settings, Printers and Add a printer.  If you are using R&R Version 9 and see this problem even though you do have an installed printer, you need to download and apply the Version 9.0 patch update which is available from our downloads page.

Q)  I am using Version 9 and sometimes when I use the Print Current Page button from Print Preview, I get a print spooler error that only goes away if I re-boot my machine.  What is going wrong?

A)  This problem has been identified as a bug and is corrected in the Version 9.0 patch update which is available from our downloads page.

Q)  When I launch the Report Librarian, it asks for a Login ID and password.  What should I enter?

Q)  Why does the DTOC() function convert dates to the DD/MM/YY format and not to the DD/MM/YYYY format to show all four digits of the year?

A)  If you use the DTOC() function, the character string that is returned is in the windows short date format that is saved within the report.  (Note: you can see the saved short date format by choosing File Print and then selected Report Specification in the Print What box.  If you scroll to the last page of the report specs you will see a section of Regional Settings that includes the Short Date Format.)  The short date that gets saved is inherited from the Windows Regional setting that was in effect when the report was originally created.  Note that it is the at the time of report creation format rather than the current Windows regional setting on the machine where the report is being opened.

The other option you can use is adding the ,1 argument to the DTOC() function.  This will always force the output of the function to be YYYYMMDD. 

Q)  When I use the Insert | Object | Create from File function to insert a Microsoft Word Document, and save the report, when I reopen the report, the OLE Object is updated but the Object Properties are increased in size by a factor of two. When this report is saved again the size again increases.  If the same procedure is performed within a Word document then this same effect does not occur i.e. everything is normal after multiple saves.  How can this be avoided?

A)  This only occurs when your Regional Settings are set to use metric as your measurement system at the time you insert the object.  If you use the US default of inches, you can insert an object and have it correctly retain its size when the report is subsequently re-opened.  As long as the setting is in US/inches when the object is inserted and report saved, you can then go back to metric and re-open the report and have the object correctly sized. 

Q)  I am using the total type, Standard Deviation and the value does not look correct.  How does R&R calculate the standard deviation?

A)  R&R uses the formula to compute the standard deviation of a population (versus a sample.)  The mathematical formula for standard deviation is:

     sqrt{(sum(Yi -Ymean)**2)/n}

where Yi is the each individual value and Ymean is the average of those Yi values, and n is the number of observations.

Q)  How do I set a custom page size in R&R? I used File | Print Properties from within R&R to select a custom page size, but the changes I made had no effect.

A)  What you need to do is select the printer from the Windows Control Panel and make the change there.  The dialog looks the same as from within R&R, the your changes will take effect.  

Q)  When I preview a report in either R&R or Arpeggio, I see 100% utilization of my CPU.  Why is this happening?

A)  This problem is caused by a behavior in the software where a processing loop during preview is consuming all available CPU cycles.  Processing large amounts of data is by nature a cycle-intensive process and even during print preview, R&R is deriving totals for display and dynamic updating.
In most environments, this issue will not impact users to any noticeable extent.   However if users are running under NT Terminal Server and any Report Writer user is previewing a report, performance will degrade for all other users and applications on that Terminal Server.   Until we are able to address this problem, the suggested workaround is to limit the use of print preview to active viewing of reports rather than allowing an unattended print preview window to remain open.  Printing and exporting of a report do not exhibit the problem and may be a better alternative to preview in a Terminal Server environment.

Q) Since upgrading my runtime users from 8.0 to 8.1 some of them are getting errors that point to MFC42.DLL.  Why is this happening?

A) Version 8.1 of R&R requires that the file MFC42.DLL (which is located in the \windows\system directory)  must be Version 6.00.8447.0 or greater. Having any earlier version will result in an error such as "ordinal 6880 not found in MFC42.DLL" or may cause runtime to simply not function.   When you install runtime from the R&R 8.1 CD, this file will be updated automatically. If you are creating your own distribution, then you do need to distribute and install MFC42.DLL.   We will be adding this requirement to the next documentation update.

R&R SQL Edition / ARPEGGIO

Q)  When I try to install an ARPEGGIO Version 2 Upgrade, I get the error message "A valid install of ARPEGGIO was not located to upgrade."

A) You may have received an obsolete product, part number 0414 or 0415.  These products do not work properly and have been superceded by part number 0475.  Contact a Liveware Publishing sales representative at 800-936-6202 or livesales@livewarepub.com for a replacement CD.

Q) At runtime, must the data source that was used to create the report exist on the user’s workstation?

A)  If you are in the Report Designer and use the File Open function, there is a control at the bottom of the dialog box that allows you to select a different data source than used to create the report.  If you are running reports from the ARPEGGIO Runtime, there is also a way to run a report against a different data source than that used to create the report; see the next question for more about this.

Q)  At runtime can you specify a different data source to run a report?

A)  ARPEGGIO does save the name of the data source with the report.  The ARPEGGIO Runtime first attempts to use the saved data source.  If that data source name does not exist on the user's machine, ARPEGGIO asks whether you want to create this data source.  If you cancel this dialog or if the saved data source does exist, the Runtime then looks to see if an RI_DSOURCE parameter has been provided.  If so, ARPEGGIO then uses that data source in place of the saved data source.  If the data source does not exist, you can run the report after selecting Cancel at the “Do you want to create...” dialog.

Q)  Does the report writer allow the user to use a different database at runtime?

A)  While ARPEGGIO stores owner.table names in the report, it does not store the name of the database in which the table resides.  Instead, ARPEGGIO relies on the data source to provide the database.  You can create a SQL Server data source to point to a specific database or you can configure the data source to point to the default database of the login user.

So, USERA could create a report using the table TEST in the database USERA.  USERB could then open that report using a data source set to the database default so that when he opens the report, it points to database USERB since that is his default.

Additionally, the RI_DSOURCE parameter supports a connect string parameter that allows you to explicitly set the database at runtime.  So in the above example, USERB could run USERA's report and point it to the USERB database by using the RI_DSOURCE value of:

MYDSOURCE|||DATABASE=USERA

MYDSOURCE is configured to use the default database but then we can override that default by using a connect string addendum DATABASE value.

Q)  Does the report writer allow the user to use a different DBMS at runtime?

A)  Yes.  However, there are issues to be aware of.  If you change from a client/server DBMS to a desktop database, for example from Oracle to FoxPro, you can run into some problems in our search rule code, because ARPEGGIO can mistakenly treat a portion of a table name as a pathname prefix and generate bad table names as a result.  Changing from one desktop platform to another can lead to problems also because ARPEGGIO saves filename extensions (so even if you have a Paradox RRCUST.DB file, we will not find it when opening a FoxPro report using a Paradox data source because ARPEGGIO looks for RRCUST.DBF, for example).   Changing from one "vanilla" client/server platform to another is likely to work, as long as the tables/columns from the "new" data source match those from the "old" data source.

Q)  Does the report writer execute an extra SQL query to the database?

A)  For reports in which ARPEGGIO generates the SELECT statement, ARPEGGIO determines the fields of a table for each table as it is brought into the report, by issuing the statement:

SELECT * FROM <table> WHERE 1 = 2

and then asking the ODBC driver for information about each of the columns of the result set.  This way ARPEGGIO gets the names and data types of each of the table’s fields.

By default, ARPEGGIO appends a “WHERE 1 = 2” clause, as in the above SELECT.  The purpose of this is to issue a SELECT for which the driver will return as quickly as possible.  Sometimes including that clause gives that desired result.  But sometimes it has the opposite effect.  It depends on the specific driver or DBMS in use.  In general, this difference comes from whether the driver/DBMS prepares the first row of the result before returning from the SELECT or whether it waits for the first fetch call to prepare that first result row.  If it prepares the first result row before returning from the SELECT, and ARPEGGIO has added a WHERE clause that is always FALSE, then it might go off and look at every row in the table to find the first one that satisfies the WHERE clause.  We make the inclusion of the WHERE 1 = 2 configurable via the RSWSQL.INI file.

Q)  Does ARPEGGIO allow users to create reports using stored procedures.

A)  Yes.  ARPEGGIO allows the user to create a “User-SQL” report in which a stored procedure is named as the data source instead of a SELECT statement.  Note that the Help screen that displays from the File | New User-SQL dialog, states that this is done by preceding the name of the stored procedure with the keyword EXEC.

In the current ARPEGGIO release (Version 2), if the user-SQL doesn’t start with SELECT, or DEFINE REPORTVIEW, ARPEGGIO takes it to be a stored procedure execution.  ARPEGGIO tries to avoid executing the stored procedure just to determine the names and types of the columns it returns.  So we offer a way in the RSWSQL.INI file for the user to tell ARPEGGIO the verb used by the platform to invoke a stored procedure (like EXEC), and based on that we find our way to the stored procedure name.  There is an ODBC way to invoke a stored procedure - {call <proc> }, which ARPEGGIO doesn’t support directly.  You can make that work by specifying in the RSWSQL.INI file that the stored procedure verb is “{call”.

Q)  What information about a data source is saved with a report?

A)  The data source name and the driver's "quote character" are saved.  The quote character is saved in case you are retrieving a report using a different data source than the one it was saved with, and the new data source uses a different quote character.  The table name in a saved report might be quote delimited, so this is necessary to ensure ARPEGGIO uses the correct quote character.

ARPEGGIO also saves the data source directory (although it is not currently used), and various flags such as whether this data source supports joins across directories.

Q)  I can't uninstall / reinstall ARPEGGIO, what can I do?

A)  You can manually un-install Arpeggio by renaming the file KILLREG.Exx in the ...WallData\Setup directory to KILLREG.EXE and then running it. This will remove the Arpeggio registry entries. Then delete the ...WallData\Arpeggio directory.

Q)  After installing Arpeggio, my West Wind HTML Builder application gives me an OLE automation error.  Did Arpeggio update any Windows common files?

A)  You can correct this problem by manually re-registering OLEAUT32.DLL.  From the Run prompt, execute:

 regsvr32 c:\windows\system\oleaut32.dll 

We have updated our installation routines in Version 8.1 so that his problem no longer occurs.

Q)  I am getting a "program type out of range" error when I try to use Arpeggio against SQL Server 7.  Is SQL Server 7 supported by Arpeggio?

A)  Since SQL Server 7 came out after the release of Arpeggio, a patch was required to add support for SQL Server 7.

You can download this patch from our downloads page.  When this patch is applied the files RSLIB.DLL and RSSQL08.DLL that reside in the\windows\system directory will be dated 09/09/1999.