We recently purchased Adagio Inventory, Ledger, OE, Payables, Receivables, DataCare, Sales Analysis & POA and are now considering adding on Gridview. A couple of questions:

1. Should I evaluate Gridview or Gridview Server?

2. I downloaded and installed Gridview evaluation just now and when I start the program it says, "The Evaluation version of Adagio GridView has reached it's expiry date. How do I resolve this so I can try out the evaluation?

Thanks,

Hi Susan,

You only need to evaluate GridView, not GridView Server. GridView Server provides a significant performance improvement over a network for companies dealing with large databases. You'll know if you need it when inquiries are taking too long to be useful. If you do your evaluation on a local copy of the data you should be fine.

I wonder if someone forgot to update the evaluation copy of GridView on the web (our evaluations normally expire in December. I'll have someone take a look in the morning.

I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

OK - that's enough work for one day!

You are right that the current Evaluation of GridView on our download page expired at the end of 2007. This should be corrected in the next day or so and if you redo your download on Monday March 31 2008 all will be OK.

I tried the evaluation of Gridview this weekend. It was a little tricky to figure out at first but once I got the hang of it.. I LOVE IT. Finally, an Adagio program that can give us the output that we need! I tested so far with only one report and used a query to select a start and end date plus a querry to select a location. I love what I can do with this program! We have had so much trouble reporting specifics with AccPac and even after purchasing Adagio OE, IC, AP, AR, SA, GL, DC, POA & Paymate, although many great benefits to these programs, we still can't get certain and specific output in some cases. At least not in an efficient way. Gridview just may be the answer!

A few questions:

1. The View I created takes 3 1/2 minutes to load. It searches over 36,000 records each time we refresh the data, even if I specify records from only 1 day. This particular report will only need to be run once per month so it's not a big deal on this report. In time, I will test out some other various reports that we will want to use and see if they are any faster. Is Gridview Server something I should consider instead? Is GV Server something that needs to be purchased INSTEAD of Gridview or IN ADDITION to Gridview?

Note - We have already upgraded to a Gigabit LAN which has improved our search performance on Workstations:

i.e. Inventory search

SBS Server – 3 seconds

XP Pro Workstation through Gigabit LAN – 15 seconds

XP Pro Worskstation through 100 LAN – 65 seconds

2. Is there a shortcut trick once the view has been created to make it accessible to users? Or do users just open Gridview, and opent he file.gv and click refresh data?

3. How do I add Gridview to my DataCare list?

Thanks,

Hi Susan,

I'm happy to see you experimenting with GridView - it's the only way to really learn about the product. Feel free to ask questions about the location of specific data in the Technical Support Forum. It will be faster than "poking around" (although that is a learning experience in itself).

In answer to your specific questions:

1)You purhcase GridView Server in addition to GridView. With GridView Server, the filters are run on your server, rather than sending the whole file up to the workstation to process the selection. While it won't be quite as fast as processing the query on a local set of the data, you can expect performance to be 4-10 times faster than moving the entire dataset over the network. If the large inquiries are only being run at the end of a month, you might consider moving a copy of your data onto your local workstation and running the Views against the copy (not that I want to discourage you from purchasing another module!).

BTW - you can often improve the performance of a View by restructuring it to take advantage of some of the indexes maintained by Adagio. However, searching for transactions within a specific date range usually requires scanning the entire file.

2) If you save Views in a common subdirectory, then others will be able to find and run them. Also, you can attach Views to the Inquiries menu choice of an Adagio application by saving the workspace in the \SOFTRAK\xxxxx\VIEWS subdirectory (where xxxx is your program subdirectory. An option under File | User controls whether a user is allowed to change the columns in a View. You can also place a shortcut on a Users dektop that will launch GridView and open a workspace directly using the /wworkspacename.GVS command line parameter. Users can then just click on the shortcut to open the View.

3) You don't need to add GridView to the list - there's nothing in a View definition that DataCare can check.

Hi Susan,

We're glad to hear that you have found GridView useful and giving you noticiable benefits.

1) GridView uses memory on the workstation, so computers with more memory should be faster (once the data is first loaded). And indeed the faster LAN connection will improve things as you saw.

GridView Server is an additional and optional program to GridView. This can be used if you have a Microsoft server (as opposed to something like Novell) and will speed up searches on large databases. If this was interesting to you, it would be in addition to GridView rather than instead of.

For the filter based on a particular day, the search has to go through the entire database because indexes are not utilized with filters. In the case of date searching (ie today's orders, this months invoices, etc), there isn't anything you can do (apart from GV server) to speed things up.

In some cases, you can use Linking rather than Filters to speed up searches. For example, list all item transactions for item ABC in history for a date range. You can make this history inquiry faster by creating a second View based on the Item Master file and link it to the history view. Linking takes advantage of available indexes and can make some links extremely faster (after the initial load).

2) You can make Views more accessible to users in 2 ways. In both cases, you need to additionally save your view as a Workspace:
- Create a shortcut to the GridView program on the desktop. In the shortcut properties, you can pre-define the path to the Workspaces (GVS) file in the Target. An example to add after ...gvwin.exe would be /wC:\softrak\views\ICHist.gvs. When starting this shortcut, the identified workspace will immediately be loaded. You can also pre-define the data path and the user information as well (check out the Fundamentals manual for more info).
- Save your views and workspaces in a program file sub-directory. Ie for Views you want Inventory users to access, save to the \softrak\icwin\views directory. Doing this will add the workspace name to the Inquiries menu in Inventory in the Custom Views section.

3) If you mean for DataCare to perform an integrity check on your GV views and workspaces, there in fact is nothing that DataCare checks against GridView files. This is why GV is not selectable within DC.

Thanks for the info. I like that I can add the workspace to the inquiries menu in other modules. Very convenient set up!

I couldn't get a shortcut on the desktop to open the workspace for some reason. It just keeps saying, "failed to open document". The path I used in the target is: I:\SOFTRAK\GVWIN\GVWin.exe /wI:\Data\File Name.gvs

Anyway, I'm happy with having them in the inquiry menus of the other modules so if the shortcut doesn't work it's no problem.

Susan:

Are you using a "View" (file extension = .gv) or a "Workspace" (file extension = .gvs)?

If it is a View, change the command line to .gv rather than .gvs.
i.e. I:\SOFTRAK\GVWIN\GVWin.exe /wI:\Data\File Name.gv

If it is a Workspace, make certain that the matching View (.gv) is also located in the same folder.

Are the GridView files located in I:\Data? If you are trying to run the ones that you see on the Inquiries menu, remember that they are located in Softrak\XXWin\Views.

Hi Bruce,

I tried both .gvs and .gv since both of those files are located in I:\Data. Both give the same error, "failed to open document". It opens the Gridview program and allows me to enter my username and password, then gives the error.

Yes, both the view (.gv) and the workspace (.gvs) files are located in I:\Data. I also tried running it from other folders such as the folders I'm using for the inquiry menus (i.e. I:\SOFTRAK\CRWIN\Views) and it results in the same error.

It works well from the inquiry menus however.

Susan,

Does the file name include a space? If so, try /w"I:\Data\File Name.gvs". I may be wrong, but I think I remember an issue when the file name has spaces.

David