Preview vs printed report

[RedSkies]

Quick question on how reports generate: If I open a report in "Preview" mode and then send it to the printer, does it have to re-run its base query and regenerate in order to print?

If this is the case, would it be more efficient to open it in "Normal" mode so it goes directly to the default printer without a preview?

I'm asking because I have a report that is currently set to open in Preview, but takes a very long time to generate because it's based on a pass-through query which goes over a slow network via a slow ODBC connection to an Oracle database.

When it finally pops up in preview and I try to print it, it acts as though it's re-running the query (starting over, essentially) because it takes just as long for it to start printing as it did for the preview to generate.

I'm trying to think of ways to cut down the amount of time users have to wait to get printed output, since most users are going to want a printout anyway, not just the on screen preview.

TIA,
Anne

 

[sha7jpm]

does this help?

in vb code you can specify whether to print or preview a report..

so in the onclick event when you run the report,
you can just put acprint rather than acpreview...

I know this does not actually answer the query about how access conducts the process, but hope it helps anyway...

it would avoid your user going through a similar wait twice..

John

 

[RedSkies]

Thanks for responding

John, thanks for your input. I guess I know what I need to do if the answer to my question is "yes" (use the acPrint parameter in the OpenReport cmd instead of acPreview). But it would be nice to know exactly how Access handles the whole process before I determine if it would be a sensible modification.

One of the reports I tried to run yesterday took 2 HOURS (I ain't lyin', baby!! ) to generate the preview. When I sent to to the printer it started grinding away again and I was afraid is was going to take another 2 hours to complete the process, assuming it had to run the base query a second time. I didn't bother to wait and find out. That's why I was asking.

Needless to say, no one is going to want to wait 4 hours for a report to print, so I'm trying to think of ways to speed things up. Unfortunately since I have no choice other than to use an ODBC connection to the Oracle backend, I've got a very limited number of ideas on how to improve performance.

Thanks again though. Anyone else out there know how this print process works??

 

[tree_buddy]

I have a problem to add similar to this. I have a query based report that works fine for the print preview but when I print I get an error and my subreport does not print. The error I get seems to have to do with a mal-written expression, but shouldn't I have gotten the error when to the query was run to preview the report!?! When I close the error the report prints w/o the [simple] subreport.

 

[Pat Hartman]

Quick question on how reports generate: If I open a report in "Preview" mode and then send it to the printer, does it have to re-run its base query and regenerate in order to print?

In a word, Yes.

A query that takes 2 hours to run is suspect. How many rows are being returned?

 

[Brian1960]

Oracle

Have you tried moving the queries to the Oracle Db and indexing them or at least checking the indexing. You could test the query directly in the Db with an SQL Viewer to see if that is the problem. If it is not then the network is at fault not the query. If it is then redisgn the query!! try indexing it or looking at the forgein keys. NB Oracle prefers number linking for speed!