VW and Vista ...

What is the current state both from cincom support point of view
and other people having actual production experience

"I" don't want to use it, but one of clients does :(

--
Dennis Smith                         +1 416.798.7948
Cherniak Software Development Corporation   Fax: +1 416.798.0948
509-2001 Sheppard Avenue East        [hidden email]
Toronto, ON M2J 4Z8              sip:[hidden email]
Canada         http://www.CherniakSoftware.com
Entrance off Yorkland Blvd south of Sheppard Ave east of the DVP

VW runs on Vista. However for our application to run, we advise our
users to "run as administrator".  Mainly we need to do that to be able
to write and modify files and/or spawn other applications like opening
Web browsers, outlook or excel.  The newly enforced UAC is pain in the
behind  -- Even if the user has Admin privileges, any app. he starts
executes at "user" level, unless explicitly told otherwise.

One of the main problems I encounter with running on Windows is
authentication.  Our App. is Internet enabled i.e it gets updates and
some information from our web server.  More and more users are behind
corporate firewalls.  VW can work through regular firewalls.  Recently
we encountered few cases where the firewall was using windows style
authentication, which is not supported in VW

The UI part does not look exactly Vista(ish) especially when user has
all of the UI bells and whistles enabled

Dennis Smith wrote:
> What is the current state both from cincom support point of view
> and other people having actual production experience
>
> "I" don't want to use it, but one of clients does :(

Dennis,

I will not make any official support statement but in my experience CST runs
nicely on Vista once UAC has been disabled and properly shot.

With UAC turned on, you should expect permission failures at the most
unexpected times. Currently there is no facility to request admin rights for
an operation, like other Vista aware applications do.

See
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/06/uac/default.aspx?
loc=en
for a lengthy explanation. The section labeled "Conveniently Accessing
Administrative Rights" explains ways to lift your application's rights to
admin level.

Andreas


Am 06.02.2008 14:45 Uhr schrieb "Dennis Smith" unter
<[hidden email]>:

> What is the current state both from cincom support point of view
> and other people having actual production experience
>
> "I" don't want to use it, but one of clients does :(

--
Andreas Tönne
Lead Consultant
Cincom Systems GmbH & Co. oHG
Tel.: +49 6196 9003 100
Mobile: +49 172 6159272
Fax: +49 6196 9003 270

Geschäftsführer/Managing Directors: Thomas M. Nies, Gerald L. Shawhan
oHG mit Sitz/based in Schwalbach/Ts. (Amtsgericht Königstein/Ts. HRA
2653)
Pers. haftender Gesellschafter/Partner liable to unlimited extent:
Cincom Systems Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH (Amtsgericht Königstein/
Ts. HRB 5069)

OK -- thanks to those who replied -- sounds to me like it will run but we
might run into some unexpected problems later (even after we showed it runs).

I guess I would like to wait for cincom to properly support the ability to
start other processes with admin instead of user rights.


Andreas Tönne wrote:

Dennis,

I will not make any official support statement but in my experience CST runs
nicely on Vista once UAC has been disabled and properly shot.

With UAC turned on, you should expect permission failures at the most
unexpected times. Currently there is no facility to request admin rights for
an operation, like other Vista aware applications do.

See 
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/06/uac/default.aspx?
loc=en
for a lengthy explanation. The section labeled "Conveniently Accessing
Administrative Rights" explains ways to lift your application's rights to
admin level. 

Andreas


Am 06.02.2008 14:45 Uhr schrieb "Dennis Smith" unter
[hidden email]:

  

What is the current state both from cincom support point of view
and other people having actual production experience

"I" don't want to use it, but one of clients does :(
    

-- 
Dennis Smith                 		         +1 416.798.7948
Cherniak Software Development Corporation   Fax: +1 416.798.0948
509-2001 Sheppard Avenue East        [hidden email]
Toronto, ON M2J 4Z8              <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="sip:dennis@CherniakSoftware.com">sip:dennis@...
Canada			         http://www.CherniakSoftware.com
Entrance off Yorkland Blvd south of Sheppard Ave east of the DVP

Dennis,

It is not only permissions on other processes. You might discover that your application no longer may write logs or access files like on XP.

For example, with UAC turned on you cannot write to the default install directory tree of VisualWorks (Program Files/Cincom....). Imagine your application sloppily writes logs relative to the web directory. "Permission failure"
Or you try to save your development image in that place. "Permission failure" One would think that overwriting an existing file that you have installed and owned should be allowed...

Currently my advise to customers is to check their applications for UAC relevant resource usage and adjust it; e.g. change paths or configure the user rights/file permissions if possible. However, my understanding is that certain system paths like Program Files are off-limits always and cannot be written to as a user.

Andreas


Am 06.02.2008 16:07 Uhr schrieb "Dennis Smith" unter <[hidden email]>:

OK -- thanks to those who replied -- sounds to me like it will run but we
might run into some unexpected problems later (even after we showed it runs).

I guess I would like to wait for cincom to properly support the ability to
start other processes with admin instead of user rights.


Andreas Tönne wrote:

Dennis,

I will not make any official support statement but in my experience CST runs
nicely on Vista once UAC has been disabled and properly shot.

With UAC turned on, you should expect permission failures at the most
unexpected times. Currently there is no facility to request admin rights for
an operation, like other Vista aware applications do.

See
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/06/uac/default.aspx?
loc=en
for a lengthy explanation. The section labeled "Conveniently Accessing
Administrative Rights" explains ways to lift your application's rights to
admin level.

Andreas


Am 06.02.2008 14:45 Uhr schrieb "Dennis Smith" unter
<[hidden email]> [hidden email] :

  
 

What is the current state both from cincom support point of view
and other people having actual production experience

"I" don't want to use it, but one of clients does :(
    
 

  

--
Andreas Tönne
Lead Consultant
Cincom Systems GmbH & Co. oHG
Tel.: +49 6196 9003 100
Mobile: +49 172 6159272
Fax: +49 6196 9003 270

Geschäftsführer/Managing Directors: Thomas M. Nies, Gerald L. Shawhan
oHG mit Sitz/based in Schwalbach/Ts. (Amtsgericht Königstein/Ts. HRA  
2653)
Pers. haftender Gesellschafter/Partner liable to unlimited extent:
Cincom Systems Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH (Amtsgericht Königstein/
Ts. HRB 5069)

Dennis,

BTW, I seems that Vista will be fully supported on 7.6 (stating at James blog and the ReleaseNote on the DEV stream)

HTH

Ciao

Giorgio

Andreas Tönne wrote:

Currently my advise to customers is to check their applications for UAC relevant resource usage and adjust it; e.g. change paths or configure the user rights/file permissions if possible. However, my understanding is that certain system paths like Program Files are off-limits always and cannot be written to as a user.

I can second that. It's a good general design to keep the application and its read-only resources ("the program") separated from all kind of volatile resources and documents.

This btw is no different on MacOSX, where the actual application bundle's contents are hidden from the user (although they could be written to, if the permissions were set appropriately upon installation).

On Vista, I found that elevating the application by using a manifest XML resource solved most of the problems. UAC will only ask once upon launch of the program wheter to allow it to run, and that's all.

Andre

Andre Schnoor wrote:
The only time that will not work if you have some self updating
mechanism built in.  In the case of update you will need to access your
application files like *.dll , *.exe , etc. to be able to modify them...

I wonder how other people resolving that? for example Adobe Acrobat
always wants to update itself ...

Also Here is another problem: on one hand the UAC assumes that the Vista
is shared environment where different people can use the PC, on the
other hand they suggest to put staff int to the User specific places.
Now imagine scenario where Bill comes in the morning logs in gets an
update which is installed into the Bill's personal place.

Then Bob comes and does the same - now we have two copies of updates
extra downloads  and god knows what else...

That is a real scenario -- I do have a computer in the living room in my
house where any  member of the family has a login...and does login
periodically

Hi all,

attached to this post you'll find a small ZIP with the required manifest
resources along with instructions how to compile them with your product
executable. The compiled program will then run elevated with system
privileges and nag the user only once.

Enjoy

Andre

P.S: I've compiled the ZIP on my Mac using Windows settings, so please
let me know if any problems with line feeds or character sets might occur.

P.P.S: For those implementing their own installers, I've written a DLL
that allows for setting the ACL permissions of any file or directory on
Vista (just ping me for those 500+ lines of code that demonstrate how
incredibly quirky Windows is). It's a good idea to assign very liberal
permissions to the program directory upon first creation. Setting the
inheritance flag will ensure that files added to the directory or any of
its subdirectories at a later time will inherit the liberal permissions
automatically.