This is an advanced topic.
A NewViews workstation can be run more than once on the same computer. Elsewhere in the manual we tell you to run NewViews from the Windows start menu, but you can have only one running workstation at a time using that method. If you attempt to run NewViews more than once from the start menu an error message is displayed saying that you are already running the workstation on this computer.
Running a single workstation on each computer is sufficient for most purposes. But there is a way to run a NewViews workstation more than once on the same computer. In this section we describe a technique that addresses the following special circumstances.
Opening a backup copy without closing the original.
A NewViews workstation can have the same database open only once. Each database has a unique database id (see the section on database ids) and two databases with the same database id are considered to be the same database even if they are in different folders. When you make a backup of a database, it will have the same database id as the original. Therefore you cannot open the backup and the original at the same time using the same workstation.
Note that this has nothing to do with the multi-user capabilities of NewViews, which allow a database to be opened any number of times through a server, but from different workstations.
Allowing different people to use NewViews on the same computer.
The same technique described here will allow different people to run a NewViews workstation on the same computer, but they can have different passwords and entirely different database login tables and window setups.
Opening the same database more than once through a server.
If you run the workstation program more than once on the same computer, you can log into the same database more than once through the same server, from the same computer. You cannot do this from a single workstation because the same database can only be opened once from that workstation, even if it accessed through a server.
Instead of running the workstation from the Windows start menu, run NewViews using a command line resembling the command line below:
c:/nv/nv2 -file c:/nv/workstation_mary.nv2
This command line assumes your installation folder is c:/nv and that the NewViews program is nv2.exe. Replace them as appropriate. This command line can be run from a command prompt or you can create a Windows desktop shortcut for it.
NewViews normally keeps workstation information in file c:/nv/workstation.nv2. The -file option of the command line above overrides this to use c:/nv/workstation_mary.nv2. A workstation can be kept in any folder and have any name, as long as it has the file type ".nv2".
You can now run a workstation as normal from the start menu and it will use c:/nv/workstation.nv2. But you can also run a workstation using your shortcut and it will use c:/nv/workstation_mary.nv2. You will be running two NewViews workstations on the same computer and each will be able to open accounting databases.
The method described here can be repeated any number of times to run a NewViews workstation any number of times on the same computer. But it can also be used to allow different people to share the same computer and run a NewViews workstation, presumably one at a time, without interfering with each other. You create a different Windows desktop shortcut for each person. In each shortcut you specify a different workstation in the -file option, with an appropriately named workstation file identifying the person.
When the shortcut is first used, the workstation will be (optionally) created if it does not already exist.
Each person's workstation can and should be protected by a different workstation password so that one person cannot accidentally open another's workstation and access their application databases.
Each workstation set up this way will automatically use the same NewViews serial number and other information associated with the NewViews installation.
Note that the technique described here can also be used to log multiple workstations running on the same computer, into the same server and open the same database on that server more than once.