I am finding developing a new report using Financial Reporter a bit frustrating. The navigation(keyboard), inserting rows and columns, copying cell formulas and waiting for the refresh, are all painfully slow. It doesn't feel right, my system is Pentium 3, 733 Mhz, 128 Mb Memory, and 20 Gb HD, OS Windows 98SE, and my data is local. Recalculating isn't obviously slow and nothing else on my system is slow.

Any thoughts, anyone?

Thanks for any ideas.

Sandra

Hi Sandra

Hmmm. We have had a couple of reports of these types of processes being very slow:
- When the program & data is on an NT Server - (usually copying the data locally resolves this)
- The other instance is if the Financial Statement sheet is very large - it has to recalculate and reposition all the rows and columns accordingly.

The types of things you are doing in FR are treated differently than just keying in data when running the program - especially if Adagio is running from the Server, it takes time relating the function across the network cabling to the program and back again.

Certainly, if you are not running with current NIC's, cabling and switches, this could be why. Your system is up to date and powerful, however, the devices used to commnicate back and forth between the Server and your station may not be. 100BaseT is the norm nowadays - I would be surprised if you are using this hardware and getting the slowness you describe.

The good news is there is a new version of Ledger just around the corner, with most of the enhancements having been implemented into the Financial Reporter. 6.8B is faster, and incorporates many things that have been asked for by our Users and Dealers alike. However, as I have already stated, if you are using older network technology, even the enhanced performance of FR may not be noticeable.

Regards

Thank you for getting back to me so quickly. I am running from local data with Adagio on my server, Novell 3.2(NIC 10/100 but 10mbit hubs).

This problem seems to be specific to the report I am writing so don't think the network interface is the guilty party.

Your comment regarding spreadsheet size and rewrite and recalculation of formulas makes sense. Are you in any way referring to the physical size of the report (4 printed pages)or just to the amount of work(rewriting) that it has to do when I do an insert. Since this is my first new report, I want to get an understanding of my best approach to ensuring simplicity and maintainability when I am writing report specs. I don't generally want to hardcode account ranges and department codes in the formulas, that is I prefer to populate a cell with that data, but also recognize that there is more than one way of doing that, and will be wanting to consider efficiency in development in future reports, a long list.

I am looking forward to the updated version of this product. Keep me posted.

Hi Sandra

I am referring to the combination of both the physical size of the worksheet (financial specification) and the amount of repositioning/recalculating FR has to do during an insert (although 4 pages is not really considered a big report). However, if you are inserting near the top of the report, there may be more 'work' required for FR to recalculate than if you were working near the bottom of the sheet, when only having to insert a row between say, two or three bottom rows. (This is only a theory though - nobody has called in to verify this as being the case.)

Other things to consider:
- Do you have many columns in the report?
- Was this report originally 'converted' from a DOS specfication (ACCPAC Plus G/L), or have you created it from scratch in Adagio FR?
- Does this slowness only occur if you have been editing the report for quite some time? (i.e. does it seem ok when you first open it up and start working on it, getting gradually slower and slower as time goes on?
- Is there anyone else using Ledger or ACCPAC Plus G/L at the time you are editing the report?

So, are you using FR's ability to 'drag and drop' the accounts onto the statement, or are you keying in everything from scratch? The Adagio Financial Reporter manual (Chapter 2) has information on the most effective method of designing statements, starting with the creation of the FR 'Account Groups'. This would be a good place to start.

Take care,

Hello Sandra...

Just a FYI that with a 10MBit hub, you are seeing no benefit from you 100MBit NICs. All your network traffic will be running at 10MBits...

Make an updated hub your next hardware purchase...

Cheers