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From: waxsteel on 27 Feb 2007 07:21
Hi There

I'm working on a project that was supposed to be setup in a single office.,
with multiple pc's networked together and each running there own copy of my
Director Projector . They would all pull data (via the ADO XTRA) from a master
pc in the office that had an Access database on it .

Now the client is trying to change things to a "Thin Client " setup - where
there are basic workstations (no hard drive - just screen and keyboard) that
run off a Terminal Server (local / in the office, I guess) . A single copy of
the Director Projector & Access database would need to be installed on this
server .

My question is has anyone done this with Director - will it work by running
multiple instances of the same projector on the Terminal server or however this
kind of thin client setup works.???

I unfortunately don't have the opportunity to test this?

Any help/ suggestions gratefully received

From: Mark A. Boyd on 27 Feb 2007 12:48
"waxsteel" <webforumsuser(a)macromedia.com> posted in
macromedia.director.basics:

> Hi There

Howdy

> Now the client is trying to change things to a "Thin Client " setup -
> where there are basic workstations (no hard drive - just screen and
> keyboard) that run off a Terminal Server (local / in the office, I
> guess)

We used to call those "Dumb Terminals". Good lord, but I haven't seen such
a setup in a looooong time - and it was using a mini-computer since
micro-computers weren't up to the task in those days. Not using Windows or
Mac either.

> My question is has anyone done this with Director - will it work by
> running multiple instances of the same projector on the Terminal server
> or however this kind of thin client setup works.???

I haven't done that with any Windows/Mac OS - one of which, of course, is
required to run a projector. There have been posts in here where people
are running a single copy of a projector from a server through "Smart
Terminals" (actual computers), though.

The ticket in those cases was to set the projector (and any external dir
files) to "read-only" or "locked". See if you can create a simple test
projector you can run on your client's system that way.


--
Mark A. Boyd
Keep-On-Learnin' :)
From: waxsteel on 28 Feb 2007 05:51
Thanks Mark

"read-only" or "locked" - Hmmm. Not sure why I'd have to do that., though the
projector has to modify an external Access Database file to update prices &
stats displayed within the Projector. I'll try & find some of these posts with
the single copy of a projector being run off a server for multiple users -
sounds exactly like what this is.

I've found out that the hardware is known as a "Think Client" box & basically
Telnets the server window to the users screen via the box (no pc). There are
up to 500 logon accounts on the main server, each with access to the programs &
with their own desktops. I'm assured this will probably work with most programs
but not sure if the projector falls into that category.

Thanks

From: Mark A. Boyd on 28 Feb 2007 14:13
"waxsteel" <webforumsuser(a)macromedia.com> posted in
macromedia.director.basics:

> "read-only" or "locked" - Hmmm. Not sure why I'd have to do that.,
> though the projector has to modify an external Access Database file to
> update prices & stats displayed within the Projector.

It allows Director (or a projector) to open files that are already open by
another user/process. You can even see this behavior on your development
machine if you try to open the same .dir file in two instances of
Director. Mark as read-only and it will open in both.

I suspect you'll only need to lock the Director files (.dir, .dxr, .cst,
..cxt), but I don't know what/how the database is designed/accessed.

If they can give you telnet access to the server for testing purposes, it
might speed up the dev time a little. Of course, you'll still want to test
from their terminals at an early stage and throughout development.

> There are up to 500 logon accounts on the main server, each with access
> to the programs & with their own desktops. I'm assured this will
> probably work with most programs but not sure if the projector falls
> into that category.

I would be concerned about 500 possible instances of a multimedia
application running on a single machine, but if yours is light on the
RAM/Processor requirements, it could work.



--
Mark A. Boyd
Keep-On-Learnin' :)
From: Andrew Morton on 1 Mar 2007 04:16
waxsteel wrote:
> "read-only" or "locked" - Hmmm. Not sure why I'd have to do that.,

Projectors try to open files (for example their xtras and .ini file) with
full access (read+write). If one instance of a projector gets read+write
access, additional instances will not be able to open those files.

> though the projector has to modify an external Access Database file
> to update prices & stats displayed within the Projector.
<snip>
> There are up to 500 logon accounts on the main server,

Are you sure it's safe to use an Access database with potentially that many
people updating it at the same time? Somewhere in the region of 5-30 is
normally regarded as the limit, certainly speed-wise but I'd also be
concerned about data integrity. SQL Server, MySQL, or similar, would be
safe.

Andrew


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