[AccessD] Is it over for desktop apps?

[Stuart McLachlan]

On 11 Sep 2022 at 20:03, Arthur Fuller wrote:

> Hey Rocky,
> 
> Thanks for your input. But I also need a bit of the nuts-and-bolts.
> How do you deploy said apps? BE on a server, presumably, but what
> about the FEs? Do you give them a link from which to download the
> current virginm or physically copy said FEs to the clients's boxes, or
> something like that?

I use one of two methods  with a local FE and a remote BE,  which one to use is dependent 
on the network in question and the application. Both use a small "stub" which can be a 
Batch file or a small executable in the executable directory with a desktop link. Users are 
trained to always use the desktop link to open the application

1.  The stub  always get the latest FE and then opens it (works fine for a reasoable sized 
executable and a fast network)

Here's the complete PB source for one such executable:
#COMPILE EXE
DECLARE FUNCTION ShellExecute LIB "SHELL32.DLL" ALIAS "ShellExecuteW" _
   (BYVAL Hwnd AS LONG, BYVAL lpOperation AS STRING, _
   BYVAL lpFile AS STRING, BYVAL lpParameters AS STRING, BYVAL lpDirectory _ 
   AS STRING, BYVAL nShowCmd AS LONG) AS LONG

FUNCTION PBMAIN () AS LONG
LOCAL wstrMaster AS WSTRING
LOCAL wstrFile AS WSTRING
wstrMaster = "\\MISServer\MISMaster\MMS.accdb"
wstrFile = "C:\MIS\MMS.accdb"
FILECOPY wstrMaster, wstrFile
ShellExecute 0, "Open", strFile, "", "", %SW_NORMAL
END FUNCTION   

2.  The stub checks the  version of the local FE and the one on the server and downloads it 
if it is newer (better on a slow network or with a large FE.).
That uses either some form of version identifier in the FE which the stub accesses or a 
simple one line control file on the server  and an ini file or Registry value on the workstation 
which  holds the current version number.