Error in file ...rpt : Database Connector Error

Question

Hello everyone,
I recently came across a strange problem whose source i can't find. I am using printToPrinter function to print a report to a printer. My application prints more than 300 reports continuously one after the other. The way i do this is as follows:
1. I create the datasource in asp.net
2. I insert the datasource in crystal reports datasource property
3. I call printToprinter
4. I close and dispose the ReportDocument object that i use to do the previous steps.
5. I continue to the next report and so on...
When i run the application from my development machine the reports print successfully. When my client whose pc is far away tries to print, sometimes and not always, one of the reports crashes in the line of code where i have put the printToPrinter method and the error is :
Error in file c:\windows\temp\myreport.rpt :
Database Connector Error
Does anyone know what causes this strange behavior? And why does this happen occasionally?
Thanks a lot in advance!

Answer 1

You're closing the reports after you finish printing them, but are you calling .Dispose() on them?  The Crystal SDK is really a wrapper around COM objects.  Code written in Visual Studio does not automatically memory manage COM objects well (if at all!) so you have to do one of two things: either explicitly call .Dispose() when you're done with a report or put the report in a "Using" structure like this (assuming C# code behind - I don't know how this works in VB!):
Using (ReportDocument myRpt = New ReportDocument())
  //insert code to load and print report here
Another issue might be due to network latency.  If your user is indeed "far away" from where the application is running and is printing to a printer local to him, then any network slow-down or things like packet errors would affect communication between the application and the user and cause the print command to error out.
-Dell