I have my Business Objects in a separate DLL from my Application Exe. One of the problems I've always had in installing Updates , where if there are any users actaully using the application, they need to logout before the update is done (as the .EXE will be In Use). A lot of the time, the only reason for an update would be a change in the business rules, and the Application.exe would not have changed, but the BusinessRules.DLL would have.  In my innocence, I thought that this restriction might not be there for the .DLL, but having tried to over-write a DLL with he application in use, it would not let me. If somebody could confirm that, no you cannot overwrite a DLL if the exe that uses it is open, or perhaps there is another way of over-writing a DLL if the Exe is in use. It would make life a lot easier for updates if even the Dll's could be over-wriiten (if not the Exe).

Hi Gerard,

I see.  I know that there were issues before running .Net applications from a shared path due to security configurations, I believe that changed with version 3.5 but I have not tested that configuration.  I used to do that with my Visual FoxPro applications, but due to the .Net security limitations when I started with it, I got used to just install on each workstation.

Again, check with Brian since he will be able to give you an specific on how AppLife Update may help you in your configuration, but almost for sure, if many users are sharing a file (any file) and you want to replace it, they will have to stop using it so it can be replaced. 

In my setups I have two versions to control the application and the database, and I force the application to be updated if the database version has changed to avoid errors with the BO library.  So far this has been working very stable with no reported issues for over 6 months on a 10 user network and many minor updates using AppLife Update.

Edhy Rijo