Hi Trent,

I am not sure what I am to do.  This is a brand new application I have been working on and testing in a beta site.  All has gone well and now it looks like I am ready to release the production version of the software in the next couple of weeks.  The very last piece of the puzzle is to move the database from the local network to a hosting site and implement ES.   If all fails, I will need to set-up local installs of the database...Big Yuk!!!!  Unfortunately for me, I am new to web hosting and I was not aware that something like this would be a problem. This will be very disappointing, because I decided to build my solution with SF so that I could use ES for this purpose, and unfortunately, I told my customers about this great feature. 

I don't know who Keith is.  I am willing to use another hosting site if it will guarantee me the ability to do all of this. 

Is it possible for your to get me in touch with Keith?  Or just tell me what hosting site I should use.

Thanks,

Jeff

Well, I know that we have a number of users that are using hosting. I think that Keith may be using this very hosting site so we may want to ask him what he did with them in regards to this. I do not recall having a conversation with Keith when he published this, so he might be the person to ask in regards to the MAC address here.

Hi Trent,

Here is another response about the MAC address I received from WebHost4Life:

Hi Jeff, MAC address is sentative information and we will not provide it.

Are you using MAC address to activate your License? I checked their official site and seems you can activate it at your Local PC first, move it to our server and then contact strataframe.net to reset your account so you can re-activate on the new machine. You activate online through the My Account area and download the license file as opposed to a live activation client.

I'm not sure if you have to use new MAC address during "Re-activation". Would you contact strataframe.net about this first?

Trent, where do I go from here?  Please advise!

Thanks,

Jeff

Oops   I should have known that about the public IP.  However, I have looked in the Help File under Enterprise Server->Step 3: Configure web.config and I do NOT see any additional details on how to secure things regarding the Web.config file for the key="StatusIpAddresses" value="127.0.0.1".   Where is the info?

Thanks,

Jeff

Hi Trent,

To activate the license I need to provide the MAC address.  So I contacted WebHost4Life about supplying me the MAC address of the server hosting my website and this is what they said:

Hi
Please provide details of the .net application you purchased such as its official site and relevant urls of descriptions and requirements so that our supervisors can have an evaluation on the application.
Regards

I am not sure where to go from here.  Please advise.

Thanks,

Jeff

First, go ahead and change the version to 1.7.0.0. That will make sure to use the 1.7 references. I will make sure that these are updated for the next point release.



Second, you DO NOT want to add the public IP as the status IP address. This would allow every person in the world to see the status, password, etc. If you have access to the local IP, then use the local IP. Otherwise, you will want to secure this. This is a lot more detailed in the help documentation. There is a section in the DOCs that explain this setting that will be more helpful than my post. Let me know if you don't get it going.

I am attempting to setup ES today.  I know it's a Saturday, but with my busy schedule it is the best time to attempt to do something like this without any interruptions.  However, I notice that after I extracted the ES.zip file into the website,  the DataSources.config file references <TypeAssemblyVersion>1.6.0.0</TypeAssemblyVersion>.  Since I am now using 1.7.0.1 version, am I going to have a problem with the ES website communicating with my windows app using 1.7.0.1? 

Also, in the Web.config file, for the key="StatusIpAddresses" value="127.0.0.1", am I to add the ip address of www.prospecthelper.com which is 66.226.20.91?  Just so that I am clear, I don't have to add every ip address of the computers running my windows app to this key...right?

Thanks,

Jeff

Hi Greg,

Thanks for all of the great info.  I am going to setup a test this weekend and see if I can get everything working with ES

Jeff

Close. I don't have easy access to the help file, but there are two data source keys when using ES. One identifies the data source to ES and is setup in the DataSource.config file on the ES server. This is one the one you'd prompt the user for and store in the registry/wherever. However, there is also one that is used by the BOs of your app. This one should be the same for all the client datasources. I.e. you app is designed to hit a database with a specific schema, abstracted into BOs within the app (E.g. imagine a db has a Customers table, which is abstracted as a CustomersBO in the app). The BO has a key that links it to a datasource setup for the app (your EnterpriseDataSourceItem). Look at the help page again to see which is which. In your example, you are using "Database100" for both, which you don't want (if you did it this way, you'd have to change the key on ALL your BOs based on client...ugly and unnecessary).



Because the EnterpriseDataSourceItem maps its own data source keys to those used by BOs, you can program against one set of BOs, with a set data source key, yet change what database the BO is hitting by simply changing the data source associated with that key (that is what you do in the SetDataSources method will code like DataLayer.DataSources.Add(...)). As I mentioned, in my app, the same BOs can hit an arbitrary dev database using a direct connection via a standard SqlDataSourceItem or it can hit either a test database or the production database via EnterpriseDataSourceItems.



So, I'm gonna assume that the first data source key is the one for the BO and the second one if for ES (check, I could have it backwards), I'd assume you'd have code like this (pseudo code):

Hi Greg,

Thank you. Your explanation truly helped.  I have looked at the help file as you suggested and I think I understand how it works.  I believe for my scenario, everytime I add a new database to my hosted SQL Server for a new group of clients I will add a new entry in the ES DataSources.config on the website assigning an unique DataSourceKey="Database100" along with the connection information pointing to the new database hosted on the internet.  When I setup the new group of clients' apps on their local computers, I will dynamically create a New EnterpriseDataSourceItem("Database100", "www.prospecthelper.com/databases", "Database100", ....).  Am I correct about this?

To dynamically create the EnterpriseDataSourceItem, I was thinking that when the app is started for the first time, it would query the user for the DataSourceKey ("Database100") which I will provide to them.  Somehow after verifying they have enter the correct key value, I was going to write it to the registry.   Then I can retrieve it and dynamically create the EnterpriseDataSourceItem everytime they start the app.  Is this a good way of handling this in my windows app?

Also, I have a Windows management app to enable the customer to manage the system.  In some cases, the customer will want to look at (read only) a 100,000 records at one time loaded into a DevExpress grid.  Right now without ES, it takes 2-1/2 minutes to load only 25,000 records from the database hosted on the internet.  I am assuming by using ES I will be able to load the 100,000 records in a reasonable amount of time (hopefully less than 30 seconds) even when retrieving them over the internet.  Is this a reasonable expectation when using ES? 

Thanks,

Jeff