testing concurrency

[Paul Cowan-7]

Hi,

I am working on an application where concurrency is likely and we really
need to ensure that it does not happen.

I am using Nhibernate and I am using the Version element which we have
tested and it obviously does work.

The question is, is it worth the effort to create integration tests for
concurrency that run during the CI build?

My instinct is no because such tests are likely to be brittle and hard to
maintain with lengthy set up scripts.

Does anybody disagree with the above statement and if so how do they
approach integration tests of such a nature?

Cheers

Paul Cowan

Cutting-Edge Solutions (Scotland)

http://thesoftwaresimpleton.blogspot.com/

[Roy Osherove]

maybe you can give racer a try? see if it helps you out

On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 11:54 AM, Paul Cowan <dagda1@...> wrote:

>
>
> Hi,
>
> I am working on an application where concurrency is likely and we really
> need to ensure that it does not happen.
>
> I am using Nhibernate and I am using the Version element which we have
> tested and it obviously does work.
>
> The question is, is it worth the effort to create integration tests for
> concurrency that run during the CI build?
>
> My instinct is no because such tests are likely to be brittle and hard to
> maintain with lengthy set up scripts.
>
> Does anybody disagree with the above statement and if so how do they
> approach integration tests of such a nature?
>
> Cheers
>
> Paul Cowan
>
> Cutting-Edge Solutions (Scotland)
>
> http://thesoftwaresimpleton.blogspot.com/
>
>
>
>

--
Thanks,

Roy Osherove
www.TypeMock.com - Unit Testing, Plain Smart

Author of "The Art Of Unit Testing" (http://ArtOfUnitTesting.com )
A blog for team leaders: http://5Whys.com
my .NET blog: http://www.ISerializable.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/RoyOsherove
[phone] (GMT+2)

[Stephen Bohlen]

I would say (as you are hinting) that testing whether NHibernate's Version mapping + optimistic concurrency works as expected is no more valuable than testing if the String class performs concatenation properly :)

In similar situations in my own work, I would instead test to ensure that your logic that *reacts* to concurrency violations is really doing what you want.

This is trivial in this specific case where you can easily simulate this by throwing a StaleObjectException and ensuring your surrounding code behaves as expected when this condition arises (e.g., test the observation of the behavior rather than the underlying mechanism at the root of the behavior).

Just my two cents,

-Steve B.

--- In altdotnet@..., Paul Cowan <dagda1@...> wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> I am working on an application where concurrency is likely and we really
> need to ensure that it does not happen.
>
> I am using Nhibernate and I am using the Version element which we have
> tested and it obviously does work.
>
> The question is, is it worth the effort to create integration tests for
> concurrency that run during the CI build?
>
> My instinct is no because such tests are likely to be brittle and hard to
> maintain with lengthy set up scripts.
>
> Does anybody disagree with the above statement and if so how do they
> approach integration tests of such a nature?
>
> Cheers
>
> Paul Cowan
>
> Cutting-Edge Solutions (Scotland)
>
> http://thesoftwaresimpleton.blogspot.com/
>

[Rohit-2]

Have you tried chess yet? Its a Microsoft research tool to test concurrency.

On Oct 12, 2009 10:58 PM, "stephen.bohlen" <sbohlen@...> wrote:



I would say (as you are hinting) that testing whether NHibernate's Version
mapping + optimistic concurrency works as expected is no more valuable than
testing if the String class performs concatenation properly :)

In similar situations in my own work, I would instead test to ensure that
your logic that *reacts* to concurrency violations is really doing what you
want.

This is trivial in this specific case where you can easily simulate this by
throwing a StaleObjectException and ensuring your surrounding code behaves
as expected when this condition arises (e.g., test the observation of the
behavior rather than the underlying mechanism at the root of the behavior).

Just my two cents,

-Steve B.

--- In altdotnet@..., Paul Cowan <dagda1@...> wrote: > > Hi, > >
I am working on an a...
 

[Paul Cowan-7]

>> hrowing a StaleObjectException and ensuring your surrounding code behaves
as expected when this condition arises

Makes a whole lot of sense to me.

Cheers

Paul Cowan

Cutting-Edge Solutions (Scotland)

http://thesoftwaresimpleton.blogspot.com/



2009/10/12 Rohit Sharma <rohits79@...>

>
>
> Have you tried chess yet? Its a Microsoft research tool to test
> concurrency.
>
> On Oct 12, 2009 10:58 PM, "stephen.bohlen" <sbohlen@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> I would say (as you are hinting) that testing whether NHibernate's Version
> mapping + optimistic concurrency works as expected is no more valuable than
> testing if the String class performs concatenation properly :)
>
> In similar situations in my own work, I would instead test to ensure that
> your logic that *reacts* to concurrency violations is really doing what you
> want.
>
> This is trivial in this specific case where you can easily simulate this by
> throwing a StaleObjectException and ensuring your surrounding code behaves
> as expected when this condition arises (e.g., test the observation of the
> behavior rather than the underlying mechanism at the root of the behavior).
>
> Just my two cents,
>
> -Steve B.
>
> --- In altdotnet@..., Paul Cowan <dagda1@...> wrote: > > Hi, >
> > I am working on an a...
>
>    
>

[Nathan Palmer-2]

That project looks really interesting. Any idea if this is being used in
production test suites?

Nathan

On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 9:07 AM, Rohit Sharma <rohits79@...> wrote:

>
>
> Have you tried chess yet? Its a Microsoft research tool to test
> concurrency.
>
> On Oct 12, 2009 10:58 PM, "stephen.bohlen" <sbohlen@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> I would say (as you are hinting) that testing whether NHibernate's Version
> mapping + optimistic concurrency works as expected is no more valuable than
> testing if the String class performs concatenation properly :)
>
> In similar situations in my own work, I would instead test to ensure that
> your logic that *reacts* to concurrency violations is really doing what you
> want.
>
> This is trivial in this specific case where you can easily simulate this by
> throwing a StaleObjectException and ensuring your surrounding code behaves
> as expected when this condition arises (e.g., test the observation of the
> behavior rather than the underlying mechanism at the root of the behavior).
>
> Just my two cents,
>
> -Steve B.
>
> --- In altdotnet@..., Paul Cowan <dagda1@...> wrote: > > Hi, >
> > I am working on an a...
>
>  
>

[Kennedy, Noel]

Hi all,

My project is a winforms smart client.  It is deployed to one customer on one site on a corporate LAN which uses an AD domain.  I am interested in your experience in smart client deployment.

Just because you are all now pressing reply and typing in Clickonce:  This doesn't fit our environment (please correct anything I say about clickonce as this might change things!):

All our users are roaming users who may login to 10+ Pcs a day.  Clickonce deploys into the user's profile, our app is around 35MB.  Logging in and out of machines with even a small profile is very slow even without our app being stuffed into it.  Also, as our PCs are used by so many different users each day, we have capacity problems storing all their profiles locally, i dont really want to add to this problem!

How we do it now:

I use the VS Setup project to generate an MSI.  I then use SMS to rollout the application to the target machines (couple of hundred).

Whats not working:

 - SMS.  Everytime we release, a significant number of PCs miss the update.  Despite numerous attempts at trying to work out why this happens, we have been unable to identify the cause(s) other than, ironicly, it seems that the SMS client appears to malfunction and require reinstalling itself.

 - Setup project. While this imposes no great time overhead, it irks me that this is still a manual step, requiring dev time. My app could happily be installed by xcopy.

I was wondering if anyone could share how they do deployment?  Could it be as simple as a batch file/similar fetching the latest build from a network share if a new version is available?  

Cheers,

Noel Kennedy

[Vinicius Canto]

Can you change domain's or OU group policy? AFAIK it's possible to exclude
some directories from roaming profle through group policy.


[]s,

Vinicius

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 6:01 PM, Kennedy, Noel <nkennedy@...> wrote:

>
>
> Hi all,
>
> My project is a winforms smart client. It is deployed to one customer on
> one site on a corporate LAN which uses an AD domain. I am interested in your
> experience in smart client deployment.
>
> Just because you are all now pressing reply and typing in Clickonce: This
> doesn't fit our environment (please correct anything I say about clickonce
> as this might change things!):
>
> All our users are roaming users who may login to 10+ Pcs a day. Clickonce
> deploys into the user's profile, our app is around 35MB. Logging in and out
> of machines with even a small profile is very slow even without our app
> being stuffed into it. Also, as our PCs are used by so many different users
> each day, we have capacity problems storing all their profiles locally, i
> dont really want to add to this problem!
>
> How we do it now:
>
> I use the VS Setup project to generate an MSI. I then use SMS to rollout
> the application to the target machines (couple of hundred).
>
> Whats not working:
>
> - SMS. Everytime we release, a significant number of PCs miss the update.
> Despite numerous attempts at trying to work out why this happens, we have
> been unable to identify the cause(s) other than, ironicly, it seems that the
> SMS client appears to malfunction and require reinstalling itself.
>
> - Setup project. While this imposes no great time overhead, it irks me that
> this is still a manual step, requiring dev time. My app could happily be
> installed by xcopy.
>
> I was wondering if anyone could share how they do deployment? Could it be
> as simple as a batch file/similar fetching the latest build from a network
> share if a new version is available?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Noel Kennedy
>
>  
>

--
"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we
fall."
Confucius Proverb

Vinicius Canto - Bach. Ciencias da Computação/USP

Blog: http://viniciuscanto.blogspot.com

[Germán Schuager]

Hi, maybe this can help you:
http://blog.schuager.com/2009/04/introducing-nlaunch.html

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 6:01 PM, Kennedy, Noel <nkennedy@...> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> My project is a winforms smart client.  It is deployed to one customer on
> one site on a corporate LAN which uses an AD domain.  I am interested in
> your experience in smart client deployment.
>
> Just because you are all now pressing reply and typing in Clickonce:  This
> doesn't fit our environment (please correct anything I say about clickonce
> as this might change things!):
>
> All our users are roaming users who may login to 10+ Pcs a day.  Clickonce
> deploys into the user's profile, our app is around 35MB.  Logging in and out
> of machines with even a small profile is very slow even without our app
> being stuffed into it.  Also, as our PCs are used by so many different users
> each day, we have capacity problems storing all their profiles locally, i
> dont really want to add to this problem!
>
> How we do it now:
>
> I use the VS Setup project to generate an MSI.  I then use SMS to rollout
> the application to the target machines (couple of hundred).
>
> Whats not working:
>
>  - SMS.  Everytime we release, a significant number of PCs miss the update.
>  Despite numerous attempts at trying to work out why this happens, we have
> been unable to identify the cause(s) other than, ironicly, it seems that the
> SMS client appears to malfunction and require reinstalling itself.
>
>  - Setup project. While this imposes no great time overhead, it irks me
> that this is still a manual step, requiring dev time. My app could happily
> be installed by xcopy.
>
> I was wondering if anyone could share how they do deployment?  Could it be
> as simple as a batch file/similar fetching the latest build from a network
> share if a new version is available?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Noel Kennedy
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

[Nathan Palmer-2]

That project looks pretty interesting. The one challenge that we run into
with the need for auto-updating applications is applying the concepts to
regularly scheduled command line applications. We use ClickOnce for our
major GUI applications and it works just fine. The size or profile issue is
not a problem. But you can't easily apply the ClickOnce technology to the
command line build. I may have to take a look at nlaunch to see what it can
do in this space. We were investigating the possibility of creating a
ServiceBus based delivery mechanism for pushing the updates (relying on an
FTP site to store the files themselves.) But this might be a bit simpler.
Nathan Palmer

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 6:21 PM, Germán Schuager <gschuager@...>wrote:

>
>
> Hi, maybe this can help you:
> http://blog.schuager.com/2009/04/introducing-nlaunch.html
>
> On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 6:01 PM, Kennedy, Noel <nkennedy@...> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> My project is a winforms smart client.  It is deployed to one customer on
>> one site on a corporate LAN which uses an AD domain.  I am interested in
>> your experience in smart client deployment.
>>
>> Just because you are all now pressing reply and typing in Clickonce:  This
>> doesn't fit our environment (please correct anything I say about clickonce
>> as this might change things!):
>>
>> All our users are roaming users who may login to 10+ Pcs a day.  Clickonce
>> deploys into the user's profile, our app is around 35MB.  Logging in and out
>> of machines with even a small profile is very slow even without our app
>> being stuffed into it.  Also, as our PCs are used by so many different users
>> each day, we have capacity problems storing all their profiles locally, i
>> dont really want to add to this problem!
>>
>> How we do it now:
>>
>> I use the VS Setup project to generate an MSI.  I then use SMS to rollout
>> the application to the target machines (couple of hundred).
>>
>> Whats not working:
>>
>>  - SMS.  Everytime we release, a significant number of PCs miss the
>> update.  Despite numerous attempts at trying to work out why this happens,
>> we have been unable to identify the cause(s) other than, ironicly, it seems
>> that the SMS client appears to malfunction and require reinstalling itself.
>>
>>  - Setup project. While this imposes no great time overhead, it irks me
>> that this is still a manual step, requiring dev time. My app could happily
>> be installed by xcopy.
>>
>> I was wondering if anyone could share how they do deployment?  Could it be
>> as simple as a batch file/similar fetching the latest build from a network
>> share if a new version is available?
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Noel Kennedy
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------
>>
>> Yahoo! Groups Links
>>
>>
>>
>>
>  
>

[Markus Zywitza]

Have a scheduled task on each PC that uses robocopy to get only the modified
assemblies from a network share each evening. You can create teh scheduled
tasks with a batch script using the schtasks command.
-Markus


2009/10/13 Kennedy, Noel <nkennedy@...>

> Hi all,
>
> My project is a winforms smart client.  It is deployed to one customer on
> one site on a corporate LAN which uses an AD domain.  I am interested in
> your experience in smart client deployment.
>
> Just because you are all now pressing reply and typing in Clickonce:  This
> doesn't fit our environment (please correct anything I say about clickonce
> as this might change things!):
>
> All our users are roaming users who may login to 10+ Pcs a day.  Clickonce
> deploys into the user's profile, our app is around 35MB.  Logging in and out
> of machines with even a small profile is very slow even without our app
> being stuffed into it.  Also, as our PCs are used by so many different users
> each day, we have capacity problems storing all their profiles locally, i
> dont really want to add to this problem!
>
> How we do it now:
>
> I use the VS Setup project to generate an MSI.  I then use SMS to rollout
> the application to the target machines (couple of hundred).
>
> Whats not working:
>
>  - SMS.  Everytime we release, a significant number of PCs miss the update.
>  Despite numerous attempts at trying to work out why this happens, we have
> been unable to identify the cause(s) other than, ironicly, it seems that the
> SMS client appears to malfunction and require reinstalling itself.
>
>  - Setup project. While this imposes no great time overhead, it irks me
> that this is still a manual step, requiring dev time. My app could happily
> be installed by xcopy.
>
> I was wondering if anyone could share how they do deployment?  Could it be
> as simple as a batch file/similar fetching the latest build from a network
> share if a new version is available?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Noel Kennedy
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

[carmour24]

This is what ClickThrough is supposed to do.  The release of Wix I have on my PC seems to have a bug in the ClickThrough UI but from what I've read if you can find a working version it should make what you want to do trivial and provide update notification to the application through an RSS feed making publishing from a central location fairly easy.

Chris

--- In altdotnet@..., Nathan Palmer <email@...> wrote:

>
> That project looks pretty interesting. The one challenge that we run into
> with the need for auto-updating applications is applying the concepts to
> regularly scheduled command line applications. We use ClickOnce for our
> major GUI applications and it works just fine. The size or profile issue is
> not a problem. But you can't easily apply the ClickOnce technology to the
> command line build. I may have to take a look at nlaunch to see what it can
> do in this space. We were investigating the possibility of creating a
> ServiceBus based delivery mechanism for pushing the updates (relying on an
> FTP site to store the files themselves.) But this might be a bit simpler.
> Nathan Palmer
>
> On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 6:21 PM, Germán Schuager <gschuager@...>wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Hi, maybe this can help you:
> > http://blog.schuager.com/2009/04/introducing-nlaunch.html
> >
> > On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 6:01 PM, Kennedy, Noel <nkennedy@...> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> My project is a winforms smart client.  It is deployed to one customer on
> >> one site on a corporate LAN which uses an AD domain.  I am interested in
> >> your experience in smart client deployment.
> >>
> >> Just because you are all now pressing reply and typing in Clickonce:  This
> >> doesn't fit our environment (please correct anything I say about clickonce
> >> as this might change things!):
> >>
> >> All our users are roaming users who may login to 10+ Pcs a day.  Clickonce
> >> deploys into the user's profile, our app is around 35MB.  Logging in and out
> >> of machines with even a small profile is very slow even without our app
> >> being stuffed into it.  Also, as our PCs are used by so many different users
> >> each day, we have capacity problems storing all their profiles locally, i
> >> dont really want to add to this problem!
> >>
> >> How we do it now:
> >>
> >> I use the VS Setup project to generate an MSI.  I then use SMS to rollout
> >> the application to the target machines (couple of hundred).
> >>
> >> Whats not working:
> >>
> >>  - SMS.  Everytime we release, a significant number of PCs miss the
> >> update.  Despite numerous attempts at trying to work out why this happens,
> >> we have been unable to identify the cause(s) other than, ironicly, it seems
> >> that the SMS client appears to malfunction and require reinstalling itself.
> >>
> >>  - Setup project. While this imposes no great time overhead, it irks me
> >> that this is still a manual step, requiring dev time. My app could happily
> >> be installed by xcopy.
> >>
> >> I was wondering if anyone could share how they do deployment?  Could it be
> >> as simple as a batch file/similar fetching the latest build from a network
> >> share if a new version is available?
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >>
> >> Noel Kennedy
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------
> >>
> >> Yahoo! Groups Links
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >  
> >
>

[Kennedy, Noel]

Hi all,

 

Thanks for your feedback on my question.  

 

After having a look at your suggestions I noticed very quickly that not
a single one was invented here so I decided to roll my own solution.
Only joking,  I knew I could do what I wanted in a day or so I decided
to give it a go rather than spend more time researching.

 

I have written a small API that wraps xcopy.  It provides versioning
support.  If anyone is interested I will blog + release the code, (use
at your own risk etc)

 

 

If anyone ever looks through the back catalogue of mails here, this is
what I found out about the suggestions.

 

ClickOnce: FYI I got something wrong below.  Although ClickOnce apps
deploy to the profile, the app binaries do not roam with the user.  They
stay local on the machine on which they were deployed to.  However, the
other problems with ClickOnce still apply in my environment

 

NLaunch: This looks interesting but I needed to get the app onto client
machines for end users.  Correct me if I'm wrong but NLaunch seems to be
about deploying the app to a customer, rather than a rollout in a LAN
environment

 

WIX/Clickthrough: I found it very hard to find out info on this.  As far
as I could discover, click through was pending in a future release.

 

P&P updater block : As a product, this looks promising but appears to
have been dropped in favour of ClickOnce.  

 

Cheers!

 

Noel

 

From: altdotnet@... [mailto:altdotnet@...] On
Behalf Of Kennedy, Noel
Sent: 13 October 2009 22:01
To: altdotnet@...
Subject: [altdotnet] Deploying smart clients

 

 

Hi all,

My project is a winforms smart client. It is deployed to one customer on
one site on a corporate LAN which uses an AD domain. I am interested in
your experience in smart client deployment.

Just because you are all now pressing reply and typing in Clickonce:
This doesn't fit our environment (please correct anything I say about
clickonce as this might change things!):

All our users are roaming users who may login to 10+ Pcs a day.
Clickonce deploys into the user's profile, our app is around 35MB.
Logging in and out of machines with even a small profile is very slow
even without our app being stuffed into it. Also, as our PCs are used by
so many different users each day, we have capacity problems storing all
their profiles locally, i dont really want to add to this problem!

How we do it now:

I use the VS Setup project to generate an MSI. I then use SMS to rollout
the application to the target machines (couple of hundred).

Whats not working:

- SMS. Everytime we release, a significant number of PCs miss the
update. Despite numerous attempts at trying to work out why this
happens, we have been unable to identify the cause(s) other than,
ironicly, it seems that the SMS client appears to malfunction and
require reinstalling itself.

- Setup project. While this imposes no great time overhead, it irks me
that this is still a manual step, requiring dev time. My app could
happily be installed by xcopy.

I was wondering if anyone could share how they do deployment? Could it
be as simple as a batch file/similar fetching the latest build from a
network share if a new version is available?

Cheers,

Noel Kennedy

[Michael Sync]

Hello,

If you have the control over AD for your network then you may want to use
Microsoft System Management Server. You just release your product and let
System Management Server handle all operations like installing software to
client machines, upgrading the software and etc.




On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 12:13 AM, Kennedy, Noel <nkennedy@...> wrote:

>
>
>  Hi all,
>
>
>
> Thanks for your feedback on my question.
>
>
>
> After having a look at your suggestions I noticed very quickly that not a
> single one was invented here so I decided to roll my own solution.  Only
> joking,  I knew I could do what I wanted in a day or so I decided to give it
> a go rather than spend more time researching.
>
>
>
> I have written a small API that wraps xcopy.  It provides versioning
> support.  If anyone is interested I will blog + release the code, (use at
> your own risk etc)
>
>
>
>
>
> If anyone ever looks through the back catalogue of mails here, this is what
> I found out about the suggestions.
>
>
>
> ClickOnce: FYI I got something wrong below.  Although ClickOnce apps deploy
> to the profile, the app binaries do not roam with the user.  They stay local
> on the machine on which they were deployed to.  However, the other problems
> with ClickOnce still apply in my environment
>
>
>
> NLaunch: This looks interesting but I needed to get the app onto client
> machines for end users.  Correct me if I'm wrong but NLaunch seems to be
> about deploying the app to a customer, rather than a rollout in a LAN
> environment
>
>
>
> WIX/Clickthrough: I found it very hard to find out info on this.  As far as
> I could discover, click through was pending in a future release.
>
>
>
> P&P updater block : As a product, this looks promising but appears to have
> been dropped in favour of ClickOnce.
>
>
>
> Cheers!
>
>
>
> Noel
>
>
>
> *From:* altdotnet@... [mailto:altdotnet@...] *On
> Behalf Of *Kennedy, Noel
> *Sent:* 13 October 2009 22:01
> *To:* altdotnet@...
> *Subject:* [altdotnet] Deploying smart clients
>
>
>
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> My project is a winforms smart client. It is deployed to one customer on
> one site on a corporate LAN which uses an AD domain. I am interested in your
> experience in smart client deployment.
>
> Just because you are all now pressing reply and typing in Clickonce: This
> doesn't fit our environment (please correct anything I say about clickonce
> as this might change things!):
>
> All our users are roaming users who may login to 10+ Pcs a day. Clickonce
> deploys into the user's profile, our app is around 35MB. Logging in and out
> of machines with even a small profile is very slow even without our app
> being stuffed into it. Also, as our PCs are used by so many different users
> each day, we have capacity problems storing all their profiles locally, i
> dont really want to add to this problem!
>
> How we do it now:
>
> I use the VS Setup project to generate an MSI. I then use SMS to rollout
> the application to the target machines (couple of hundred).
>
> Whats not working:
>
> - SMS. Everytime we release, a significant number of PCs miss the update.
> Despite numerous attempts at trying to work out why this happens, we have
> been unable to identify the cause(s) other than, ironicly, it seems that the
> SMS client appears to malfunction and require reinstalling itself.
>
> - Setup project. While this imposes no great time overhead, it irks me that
> this is still a manual step, requiring dev time. My app could happily be
> installed by xcopy.
>
> I was wondering if anyone could share how they do deployment? Could it be
> as simple as a batch file/similar fetching the latest build from a network
> share if a new version is available?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Noel Kennedy
>
>  
>

--
Don't go the way life takes you.
Take life the way you go

http://michaelsync.net

[Kennedy, Noel]

haha!

 

I'm trying to reduce my reliance on SMS.  Hence the original post ;p

 

From: altdotnet@... [mailto:altdotnet@...] On
Behalf Of Michael Sync
Sent: 30 October 2009 16:35
To: altdotnet@...
Subject: Re: [altdotnet] Deploying smart clients

 

 

Hello,

 

If you have the control over AD for your network then you may want to
use Microsoft System Management Server. You just release your product
and let System Management Server handle all operations like installing
software to client machines, upgrading the software and etc.

 



 

On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 12:13 AM, Kennedy, Noel <nkennedy@...>
wrote:

 

Hi all,

 

Thanks for your feedback on my question.  

 

After having a look at your suggestions I noticed very quickly that not
a single one was invented here so I decided to roll my own solution.
Only joking,  I knew I could do what I wanted in a day or so I decided
to give it a go rather than spend more time researching.

 

I have written a small API that wraps xcopy.  It provides versioning
support.  If anyone is interested I will blog + release the code, (use
at your own risk etc)

 

 

If anyone ever looks through the back catalogue of mails here, this is
what I found out about the suggestions.

 

ClickOnce: FYI I got something wrong below.  Although ClickOnce apps
deploy to the profile, the app binaries do not roam with the user.  They
stay local on the machine on which they were deployed to.  However, the
other problems with ClickOnce still apply in my environment

 

NLaunch: This looks interesting but I needed to get the app onto client
machines for end users.  Correct me if I'm wrong but NLaunch seems to be
about deploying the app to a customer, rather than a rollout in a LAN
environment

 

WIX/Clickthrough: I found it very hard to find out info on this.  As far
as I could discover, click through was pending in a future release.

 

P&P updater block : As a product, this looks promising but appears to
have been dropped in favour of ClickOnce.  

 

Cheers!

 

Noel

 

From: altdotnet@... [mailto:altdotnet@...] On
Behalf Of Kennedy, Noel
Sent: 13 October 2009 22:01
To: altdotnet@...
Subject: [altdotnet] Deploying smart clients

 

 

Hi all,

My project is a winforms smart client. It is deployed to one customer on
one site on a corporate LAN which uses an AD domain. I am interested in
your experience in smart client deployment.

Just because you are all now pressing reply and typing in Clickonce:
This doesn't fit our environment (please correct anything I say about
clickonce as this might change things!):

All our users are roaming users who may login to 10+ Pcs a day.
Clickonce deploys into the user's profile, our app is around 35MB.
Logging in and out of machines with even a small profile is very slow
even without our app being stuffed into it. Also, as our PCs are used by
so many different users each day, we have capacity problems storing all
their profiles locally, i dont really want to add to this problem!

How we do it now:

I use the VS Setup project to generate an MSI. I then use SMS to rollout
the application to the target machines (couple of hundred).

Whats not working:

- SMS. Everytime we release, a significant number of PCs miss the
update. Despite numerous attempts at trying to work out why this
happens, we have been unable to identify the cause(s) other than,
ironicly, it seems that the SMS client appears to malfunction and
require reinstalling itself.

- Setup project. While this imposes no great time overhead, it irks me
that this is still a manual step, requiring dev time. My app could
happily be installed by xcopy.

I was wondering if anyone could share how they do deployment? Could it
be as simple as a batch file/similar fetching the latest build from a
network share if a new version is available?

Cheers,

Noel Kennedy




--
Don't go the way life takes you.
Take life the way you go

http://michaelsync.net