Hi John,
Go back to the direct connection first so we need to know what DB driver/client software you are using?
Is it using OLE DB, ODBC, Native, ADO.NET(XML) or Crdb_xml.dll as the driver?
If using ODBC have you enabled ODBC Logging to see what is being queried by CR? If so look for the SQLQUERYCOLUMNS command, or could be the TABLE's command...
Don