RE: launcher, et al

Question

It would be nice if Forte let you decide what type of icon you want it
to create when you install an application on a given node.I thought, if you put in the icon in the
appdist\...\application directory
this
is automatically made?
I think I used the wrong terminology here. I meant to say that I wish
you could choose what type of shortcut Forte creates for you (i.e. ftcmd
vs ftexec vs .exe, when appropriate).
Also, it would be nice if you could turn off this functionality all
together. I know if you make the client partition an applet it doesn't
create an icon, but otherwise it tries to when you run iscript.
I think we have pretty much decided here to give up on Forte's default
distribution mechanism (even though that was supposed to be on of it's
strong points when it was brought in-house here).
I was wondering what approaches people have had with writing their own
distribution mechanism. We would like to be able to track what users
have installed which versions of various apps, be able to download
updates when available (possibly with a prompt to ask the user if they
want this), etc. Also, our user have sort of balked at the "launcher"
concept where you have to run what seems like 2 applications to get to
the one you want.
I was thinking of using a setup where we create shortcuts for them that
actually run a small program that checks for updates, logs the fact that
they ran the program, and launches the app they wanted. That way it
still looks like a single double click, but we get what we want from the
app. support perspective as well. This would be sort of similar to
ftcmd where you have a shortcut that says "shellapp run someotherapp".
This would open up a lot of other possibilities, like checking which
user is logged on and then updating some repository that keeps track of
what users run what applications, but at a level where each app doesn't
have to worry about tracking that sort of thing. Single sign-on type
feature may also be a possibility.
I'd like to hear what people think of these ideas. Anyone doing
something similar to this already? Does it seem doable? Other
functionality that would be nice to have?
Sam Yates
Systems Analyst
Amgen, Inc
[email protected]
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Answer 1

Sam,
You are right. Initially there was a lot of excitement about the deployment
capability of Forte. It works very well with small apps. Unfortunately it
does not scale well for say a client of size 10 MB and hundreds of clients.
The problem gets compounded if your clients are not on Ethernet but on slow
speed links. On a 56K WAN link it took 25 minutes to download an exe of 7 Mb
size. I am sure no user would like to wait for 25 minutes to see the first
screen after clicking on the app.
What we have done in our deployments (currently some clients run on LAN many
on slow speed WAN at different sites around the world) is, to use NT tools
to push the client exe or btd/btx to each branch server. The users launch
the application by clicking on an icon on their desktop which points to the
exe on the local server There is no launcher (these are run using ftexec) or
downloading involved. The Ops/Sys Admin people push them to all the servers
when a new deployment/release is made.
The above solution is simple and practical and is working very well for us.
Yes, you can make it more elegant by doing your own special deployment app
which downloads a zip to the client and unzips on receiving it and also
checks versions etc. etc. Again, pls. note that you will get into
configuration control problems if you want to make it very sophisticated
(checking versions etc.)
Hope this helps.
Nirmal
Nirmal P Uppalapati Phone: [phone]
VP-US Operations [phone]
PSI Data Systems Ltd. Mobile: [phone]
Suite 406 Fax: (203)
359-4662
One Bank Street Email : [email protected]
Stamford, CT 06901 USA Web: http://www.psi.soft.net
-----Original Message-----
From: Yates, Sam <[email protected]>
To: 'forte-users' <[email protected]>
Date: Tuesday, July 28, 1998 4:19 PM
Subject: RE: launcher, et al
It would be nice if Forte let you decide what type of iconyou want it
to create when you install an application on a given node.I thought, if you put in the icon in the
appdist\...\application directory
this
is automatically made?
I think I used the wrong terminology here. I meant to say that I wish
you could choose what type of shortcut Forte creates for you (i.e. ftcmd
vs ftexec vs .exe, when appropriate).
Also, it would be nice if you could turn off this functionality all
together. I know if you make the client partition an applet it doesn't
create an icon, but otherwise it tries to when you run iscript.
I think we have pretty much decided here to give up on Forte's default
distribution mechanism (even though that was supposed to be on of it's
strong points when it was brought in-house here).
I was wondering what approaches people have had with writing their own
distribution mechanism. We would like to be able to track what users
have installed which versions of various apps, be able to download
updates when available (possibly with a prompt to ask the user if they
want this), etc. Also, our user have sort of balked at the "launcher"
concept where you have to run what seems like 2 applications to get to
the one you want.
I was thinking of using a setup where we create shortcuts for them that
actually run a small program that checks for updates, logs the fact that
they ran the program, and launches the app they wanted. That way it
still looks like a single double click, but we get what we want from the
app. support perspective as well. This would be sort of similar to
ftcmd where you have a shortcut that says "shellapp run someotherapp".
This would open up a lot of other possibilities, like checking which
user is logged on and then updating some repository that keeps track of
what users run what applications, but at a level where each app doesn't
have to worry about tracking that sort of thing. Single sign-on type
feature may also be a possibility.
I'd like to hear what people think of these ideas. Anyone doing
something similar to this already? Does it seem doable? Other
functionality that would be nice to have?
Sam Yates
Systems Analyst
Amgen, Inc
[email protected]
To unsubscribe, email '[email protected]' with
'unsubscribe forte-users' as the body of the message.
Searchable thread archive <URL:http://pinehurst.sageit.com/listarchive/>
To unsubscribe, email '[email protected]' with
'unsubscribe forte-users' as the body of the message.
Searchable thread archive <URL:http://pinehurst.sageit.com/listarchive/>