1 Jul 2008 01:01
Deploying and upgrading Volume Desktop applications
Folks I've recently had to create a Volume Desktop application (v11.2 - yay!) but now have to devise a strategy for perrforming upgrades when I don't know exactly where the app is located on the user's computer. This seems like a wheel that would have been invented long ago, but the issue is new to me and is causing (more) grey hairs (to fall out). Do you have any hints/tips to share about how to a) deploy and b) provide upgrades for an "engined" application? It seems to me that the data file will need to live in a separate folder than the application but that's a headache for my users, who are non-technical primary school teachers, and have no time or inclination to learn about "program files" and "data files". They think in terms of Word documents, and they like to install the program on their USB stick because the stick is easier to carry around than a laptop, and every computer at school (and at home) has Word on it, so there's no need to have Word installed on the stick. However, I can't expect that my program will have the same comprehensive distribution, so I've needed to install the whole thing on the stick. Trouble is, when I upgrade the program, unless the data file is sitting right there next to the structure file, the users get a series of incomprehensible (to them) messages about selecting data files and creating log files. The alternative is to get the user to pick apart the folder structure of the engined app (which has several folders of similar names and is quite confusing even for a developer like me) to put the old data file + journal file into the internal "Database" folder of the upgraded application. It's tricky even for me, so I don't want to inflict that procedure on my users.(Continue reading)
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