Does anyone have any suggestions on how to increase the speed of my Crystal
Report?  My users are starting to notice a significant slow down (appx. 20+
secs. for a one page report).  I am using Crystal Reports 6, VB5, Access 97,
10BaseT Windows 95 peer-to-peer network with a 200 MhZ Pentium I server with
32MB RAM.  The two tables that the report draws from are as follows:  1st:
1,300 records & 43 fields, and 2nd:  3,100 records & 130 fields.

My questions are as follows:
1) Would upgrading to Crystal Reports 7 help?
2) Will upgrading the RAM and/or the server machine make a significant
difference?
3) Should I go ahead and switch to SQL Server?  (By the end of this year I
should have 4-5 times the number of records.)
4) Would switching to Active Reports cause any speed increase?

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance for your help.

Angie Galloway
PAK Unlimited, Inc.

Here is how I would proceed.
1. Check that the machines have sufficient free disk space and that their
disks are defragmented.  If they have less than 100 meg of free disk space
do everything you can to get it above 100 meg of free space.  (Check
windows/Temp for lots of old temp files)
2. Repair and compact your database.
3. Check that you have indexes on the fields that are appropriate for your
report.
4. Open each report in the designer and select Database/Verify Database. If
there have been any changes to the Indexes or table structure this will fix
slow downs.

Make sure that you have done all of the above before proceeding with the
next set

That is all of the free changes. If they don't do it
1. Check that all of the machines have a minimum of 32 meg of ram. (64
preferred)
2. Have a network engineer check your LAN traffic. If it is high concider
100 base T.

SQL Server is "Way Cool" fun to work with, looks good on your resume, etc.
but I don't think that you need it for this number of records. But that
depends on how much the slow down is worth. If the slow down is costing real
money then the fastest way to generate reports is with SQL server running on
a dedicated multi processor box and have stored procedures deliver your
record set. This is assuming that your users are looking at a small subset
of the data.

I can tell you that upgrading to 7.0 will not solve the speed problem.  I
upgraded to 7.0 and it slowed down my 16 bit VB programs until I had to
return to using CR Vs 4.5.
CR's response was that Version 7 has been slower at loading VB forms with
the control on the form and printing the report.  As far as I know there is
nothing in the works to assist in the problem