Janus Grid Display Issue

I doubt I will get many responses but I am asking anyways :D

We recently started getting display and functionality issues with the janus grid user control in one of the vb6 apps I am in change of. Now no updates to the program with any respect to the control, no updates to the control itself (its probably being phased out for support as nonew updates to it), but for some reason the grid in report view doesnt display any column headers, column header text or content. The scrollbars still show like there is much data loaded in it but its basically useless and users can not pass the screen.

Google has no relevant results for this either.

So far I have determined that its a permissions issue as the CM administrator has no problems with it in his terminal server instance. Locally the control runs fine for me but we need to know what the exact permission issue is as everyone cant be admins. I have had my terminal server profile deleted and was recreated upon next logon but still issues.

Thanks

Not that this will solve anything.... Maybe see if there are certain messages being received/processed when it works vs when it doesn't work? Use Spy++ or similar tool? If there are, maybe it might lead you somewhere positive.

FYI: From past experience it appears some APIs break depending on sys admin policies and permissions (XP system). For example, with recent changes one of my apps that queried domain SQL servers, from workstations, no longer works and I had to provide an alternative by offering a inputbox-type solution; yuck. Maybe a similar situation to whatever calls that control may be making?

Thanks. Unfortunatly I can not run dev tools on the server. I could run it on my local system so that may be a good place to start but harder to identify. I have an email in with codejock but figure it will take at least a day to get a reply. I need to get this fixed asap as we spent several hours debugging to get this far.

This is one reason why I hate to use heavy 3rd party user controls.

Im thinking that I could create my own usercontrol with a listview on it to wrap alot of api functions to provide a mminimum set of features that will allow me to ditch the janus grid. Doing things like alternating row colors, data formatting and column resizing are easy with some apis and I dont think they will be restricted by any security policies.

It will be completely unreasonable to replace the grid throughout the program within the time frame we have as its already into QA testing schedules with deployment coming up in about a month in which qa testing and full regression testing will need the entire time. :(

Hmmm, I assume you know data is being populated, i.e., you can test the values being sent to the grid for population or if the grid is databound via ADO or something else, you would be able to query the grid contents to see if it returns any values.

If you know what grid control class is being used (maybe it is using an O/S syslistview32/systreeview32, subclassed of course), you might be able to google on permission related errors pertaining to that specific control. Even if you can't run spy++ on the server to determine what class that control is displaying, you should be able to whip up a quick vb/.net app to get class names the cursor happens to be over? Of course, if it is a custom, owner-drawn, usercontrol, then all bets are off.

Another thought: This may be a feature and not bug? Could the codejock license/validation be failing and purposefully preventing the grid from displaying correctly? For example, some validation software might be querying hard drive serial numbers or NIC/mac info via WMI or other tools that now may be disabled for non-administrators or possibly reading/writing to registry which is now failing. Something worth asking CodeJock.

Just a guess Rob... Never worked with Janus GC....

What is the version that you are using? Is it up to date? Saw this link for patches (the last one was posted on Posted on June 19, 2001 :))

http://www.janusys.com/janus/beta/downloads_patches.htm

Nope, we have the patch/update already - 2.0.0.2215

Arent all "Features" just bugs lol.

Hi LaVolpe,

You asked "Could the codejock license/validation be failing and purposefully preventing the grid from displaying correctly?". To answer this question, no we do not purposefully prevent any third party control from displaying correctly, this seems to be an issue with Janus. We cannot control how other 3rd party controls draw themselves, however we are more than willing to work with you and / or Janus to resolve any problems you are having. :cool:

Best regards,

Kirk Stowell
Codejock Software
www.codejock.com

Hi Kirk, Welcome to the Forums.

As per the info and picture, what do you think could the issue be?

Thanks

Hi RobDog888,

At first glance it appears to be a refresh issue, that is the window is not getting redrawn after it is updated. It is hard to tell without actually seeing the code or stepping thru it with a debugger. Have you tried minimizing / normalizing your app to see if the window redraws?

Kirk

Im sure I tried but will double check tomorrow. Dont want to break out the work laptop and remote in at this hour lol.

The records are actually there but not visible like in the screen shot attached in first post. If I double click on an area where a grid recrd should be it fires the double click event and attempts to open up a secondary form with the customer details but it locks up the thread and no choice but to terminate the process with taskmanager. Seems like some data may be being transmitted from the grid to the child form confirming that something is there.

Friday we tried taking everything associated with the grid from one working terminal server over to the dev terminal server where its broken and still no luck.

If its a refresh/drawing issue then not sure why being in the local admins group produces no errors. Seems it should be consistant but not sure how the grid is authored.

Thanks and will keep the thread updated with any new findings.

Thinking of writting a wrapper for the listview perhaps and replace the janus grid with that. We cant take the chance that the issue will arise in other environments like Production which will be disasterious. :(

Ok, let me know if you need any help with this. Not to be self promoting or anything :) but have you looked at our Report Control as an alternative to Janus Grid? http://www.codejock.com/products/rep.../?platform=com. We have a feature tour you can walk thru to review major features.

Cheers,
Kirk Stowell
Codejock Software

Thats a nice control but we just need basic displaying of tabular data.
They are now getting worried and I doubt they will want to take any risks that would be out of our control.

Looks like a wrapper listview or a flexgrid perhaps. Almost done with a listvew demo for them to approve.

Still dont have the root cause on this so I will leave it as unresolved for now. If a solution is found please let me know.

Thanks