Guys,

My application makes use of the superb flexibility of the DDT. What I need to be able to do, is stop users importing 'old' pkg files. Is there a way to do this?

thanks in advance.

Geoff Hirst

We never let the end user have direct access to the PKG file for this very reason.  In our medical software, we always remove the old PKG files and this is part of the install so they never have to manually select the PKG file (or shouldn't have to).  But we leave it out there for support purposes in the case that we need to update their structures because they had other issues. 

The DDT actually does have a version that it updates when you change structures that was going to be used initially for other purposes.  But it really doesn't get used at present and maybe this is something to consider in the future.  The problem is that if a user selects the package file and no other package files are around...how do you check this?  It would have to be on a database someplace.  This is where we have landed everytime that we have thought about this and it would really be easier if this were checked within the deployment application instead.

One approach may be to create a WinRar EXE that extracts the application and PKG file at the same time and executes it altogether and then cleans up after itself.  Within this same EXE you could have a version file that you use to test a version table on your DB. 

There are a number of ways to probably create a test for this...but without having all of the PKG files in the same location, it would be difficult for the DatabaseMigrator class to determine this.  I am open to suggestions if you have any in this regard...I could be missing a really simple solution