I found a couple of other referenes to this problem here, and it was implied that an assembly cannot be run from a network drive.  However, I want to learn how to keep development directory in network drive in preparation for time when more than one developer is working on same project.

How is it possible to run an assembly from a particular network drive, and directory, not from other places?

Thank you very much,

Alex

Sure.  This is something that we cover it some detail in class (which we should be posting or next training dates this week).  In the past there was a huge pendulum swing in the direction of web applications because it was so difficult to make Win form applications scalable and accessible remotely.  So the web was really the only avenue in which to do this.  The pendulum has been swinging back the other way with the advent of web services.  Developing a web applicaiton generally takes 7 times as long as producing a win forms application...and this is with web experience.  There are more factors to take into account such as browser limitations, post-backs, session states, etc.  So to produce an application of any size requires some serious dedication and time.  I will touch on this again in a minute.

Win forms are a more more solid environment in which to develop.  You have more control over the applicaiton, can develop forms, reports, etc much faster than on web forms.  The issue that people generally have with the win forms when creating distributed applications is determining how they will connect to data.  This is what our Enterprise Server provides.  It provides the benefits of developing in Win forms while giving the scalability of web....this technology is referred to in the industry as Smart-Client which I am sure that you are already familiar with.  Though web forms may be used with the ES as well and is especially beneficial for distributed web servers talking to a single point for data access.

There is a time and place for web applications.  Let me give you an example of how we use the web for our medical application.  Our medical application is written as a WinForms application; however, we are going to provide a web portal that allows patients to request refills for the scripts, schedule an appointment, fill out their patient information from home rather than sitting in the doctors waiting room, and review their lab results online.  This extends the application and uses the same BOs, etc that are used on the win form applications.  But this provides a nice extension to the application rather than trying to run the entire app through the web browser.

Finally, we plan to provide a SAAS model (Software as a service) for our medical software as well which allows the end-user to store their data, etc. on our servers and all they have to do is download a client install.  So they run the WinForms on their side (client-side) while all of the data resides on our servers and they get to the data using our Enterprise Server (which is obviously transparent to them).

Hope this makes sense

I'll chime in here with my recommendation for source control: Subversion.



We've been using it for a bit now and it is very good. It is also open source and free It won't integrate as well with Visual Studio as Team Foundation, but it does all that is needed, does it well, fast and is easy to learn. I use Tortoise SVN to do most of my work (extension to windows Explorer), and also AnkhSVN (VS plug-in). Just google Subversion and you'll find it.

Hrm, I'm going to have to check that one out... having a Windows Explorer extension and being able to access source control from outside of VS would be nice... Thanks for the info, Greg.

In all reality, I think TFS only makes sense if you have a huge, distributed team, or you've got an MSDN Premium VS subscription and you only have 5 developers and can make use of the included workgroup version.  Beyond 5 developers, or if you don't have a Team System subscription (there are so many dang levels of MSDN subscription I can't keep them all straight), then finding a good SQL based solution that is cheap and fast is your best bet.

Hi Greg.

I had heard very good things about Subversion before and gave it a quick look. Now you mentioned it I will try and play with it more seriously.

Thanks!

A little about how my company uses it. I work remotely (at home) and the svn server is in the main office. We use an apache server, with an ssl connection and apache authentication. It is very fast. Having previously used Visual Source Safe, there are a couple of things I really like about it. First, I like the copy-modify-merge paradigm better than the lock-modify-unlock paradigm. It's more flexible and easier to administer. Second, as compared to VSS, I really am liking branches, mainly because it is so easy to merge changes between branches. Third, it is fast. Using svn remotely is faster than using VSS was locally. Way faster.



If you are interested, the SVN book is very helpful:



http://svnbook.red-bean.com/



Also, I found this book very helpful:



Pragmatic Version Control

http://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Version-Control-Subversion-Starter/dp/0977616657/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-1400485-3799855?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190304075&sr=8-1



If any of you have any questions I'll do my best to answer them!

I was anxiously waiting for you to say so!

... kidding, I will have a look at the links you provided and probably ask you latter.

Thanks Greg.

LOL



Anytime with any questions. No guarentee on the answers though....

Hey Greg.

It is time.

I have TortoiseSVN installed and everything went really fine during tests. I am also using VisualSVN integrated into Visual Studio. But then I created a Repository on one server and added an application to it, which has lots of files in many folders. Now, if I try to perform a SVN Checkout in another machine, it takes like forever. The same if I use the TortoiseSVN Repo-browser (if you are familiar to it). It takes almost 5 minutes just to list the Repository content.

Have you faced anything like this?

About time!







I'm using AnhkSVN for VS integeration. I haven't used VisualSVN...how is it?







Hmmm....nope I haven't. Initially, I used a server that was on local network and not surprisingly, it was blazing fast. Several months ago, I moved the server (with the repositories) to a server (beefed up work station really) that is remote, connecting to it with TCP. It is still blazing fast.



I'm using the apache server with authentication/encryption. I have about 3mb download speed with 512kb upload speed. The server has a big pipe, something like 10mb up/down.



I just did a speed test with my setup. I checked out my entire repository, which included the trunk and two branches through TortoiseSVN. Here are the results:



~42MB transfered

7900 Files

3:45 time to check out



Typically, I'd only checkout a single branch or the trunk, so it would only take a bit over a minute. Doing updates and commits usually takes seconds....about enough time to take a sip of my beverage of choice



Using the repo browser is fast, usually about a second to expand a any part of the tree.



So, my first guess would be that you have either a poor connection (maybe try drying out the string... )or maybe you're using the SVN server and it isn't as robust for remote connections. Or maybe something is hosed....



What is you setup?

Well, what I have tried looks nice. It shows a red, yellow or green dot besides everything telling you the current state of all files. You can right-click and choose whatever SVN action you would like to take. I hadn't heard of AnhSVN yet, but I would guess they are very similar.

Let's put it this way, if I did the same with the speeds I'm getting here, I would have a serious drinking problem by now...

I have installed Apache 2.2 to see if I could get it running with SVN on the server, but haven't been able to make them talk to each other properly up to now. Keep getting 301 errors everytime I try to Repro-browse the repository. One strange thing I have noticed browsing all these open source forums everywhere is that nobody ever gets t a solution post to any problem... or maybe I was just unlucky.

So, I'm still on a local environment, just trying to reach the server as a mapped driver. After what you've said, I'm sure I have done something wrong over here. If I create a new application it works as lightning. But once I try to add my existing app to the repository (and it does it fast), I can't seem to check it out in any other machine with at least a normal speed, and repo-browsing takes ages.

Just to let you know, I am going to try SourceVault as well. This one uses SQLServer as repository and sounds really good. Will let you know of my progress.

Thanks a lot Greg!!!  And how have you been?