Write permission for user who installed msi package - permissions

first of all, i'm not an expert programmer by any means so please excuse if my lingo is off.
I programmed a small project for school, basically it's just a simple cash register application. The user can select products to sell, create new products etc.
When selling products, the user has the option to "print" a bill, ie the program fills a string with some information and creates a new textfile via streamwriter. Also, once the program gets closed, the current stock of products gets saved in a serialized file. The same file gets loaded every time the program starts.
Everything worked fine during debugging, however I created an msi package to test it and neither saving the textfile nor the serialized file works because apparently I don't have sufficient permission to do so.
Can someone tell me how to give the user who installed the programm with the msi the rights needed to make my program work?

I assume you are running on Vista or newer OS? This is the case where UAC prevents your normal applications to write to Programs Files (where again I assume you have installed the application).
The recommended locations to save user data are mentioned in this StackOverflow thread:
Best place to save user information for Windows XP and Vista applications
You can also set permissions in the package during the installation using MsiLocakPermissions table, but I would not recommend it. Program Files folder should be used to store application resources, not user data.

Related

Is it bad practice to have support ticket software create a folder for each submitted ticket?

I wrote a support ticket system. Part of the ticket submission process allows the user to attach files. Once files are attached, the software creates a folder with the ticket ID number as the folder name, and stores the attachments there.
Each time the ticket is loaded, the contents of that folder are displayed in a listbox where they can be modified, added to or deleted, or opened.
The reason I did this was so that the attachment folders were easily accessible, even if the user was not using the software. This way they could send someone who doesnt have access to the software a link to the attachment folder.
The support ticket system is stored in an Access database, and runs out of a stand-alone Windows Form application.
Is this a bad practice? Will this lag the system out eventually? The software will be run off of a share drive, and the folders will be stored there as well.
I do not anticipate more than 60 users ever using this software.
I do not anticipate more than a few dozen requests per week, and requests could be archived once they were resolved.

MS- Acess database interface update from local

I am extremely new to Ms-Access. I have a central back end access database in server computer. And all the users have the front end user interface installed on their system.
Now, whenever I make any changes to the interface in my local, i need to re-install the updated interface on each of their system. Is their any way that i can do so that i will make the changes only on my local and it will be automatically reflected on all the users' systems.
Thank you.
Ok there are a couple of options that you can do to either fully or paritally automate this process.
Partial Automation
If you don't have a lot of users and you don't want to do a great deal of coding you can write a simple batchfile or vbs file which you set up on the users desktop as an icon. Batch file code would show the following type of information.
#Echo Off
REM Copy your file from server location to local user machine
xcopy "F:\ServerDirectory\databasename.mdb" "C:\ClientDirectory\databasename.mdb" /E /Y /R
Set this up on the users machine as an icon and whenever you want them to update their front end ask them to double click the icon. This will overwrite their client with whatever you place in the location on the server. It is advisable to create all table links to the database back end having UNC paths as well.
I have used this successfully for various applications - I make changes to the front end place in appropriate location on the server and then do a quick e-mail to people just to ask them to double click the bat file icon.
Full Automation
Programmatically set version control up using visual basic so the client checks version number of the client against a server number and if the client is not the latest will download a new version.
This is more involved and full instructions are available here.
Front End Auto Update
When you deploy an MS Access solutions like this, you need to decide whether to share the client MDB file between all users, or distribute copies to each user. It sounds like you have taken the second option. Each choice has merits and disadvantages. If you stay with the current approach, you might look at a scripting option to deploy updated client MDB files between users.

Many user using one program (.exe) that includes datasets

I created a time recording program in vb.net with a sql-server as backend. User can send there time entries into the database (i used typed datasets functionality) and send different queries to get overviews over there working time.
My plan was to put that exe in a folder in our network and let the user make a link on their desktops. Every user writes into the same table but can only see his own entries so there is no possibility that two user manipulate the same dataset.
During my research i found a warning that "write contentions between the different users" can be occur. Is that so in my case?
Has anyone experience with "many user using the same exe" and where that is using datasets and could give me an advice whether it is working or what i should do instead?
SQL Server will handle all of your multi-user DB access concerns.
Multiple users accessing the same exe from a network location can work but it's kind of a hack. Let's say you wanted to update that exe with a few bug fixes. You would have to ensure that all users close the application before you could release the update. To answer you question though, the application will be isolated to each user running it. You won't have any contention issues when it comes to CRUD operations on the database due to the network deployment.
You might consider something other than a copy/paste style publishing of your application. Visual Studio has a few simple tools you can use to publish your application to a central location using ClickOnce deployment.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/31kztyey(v=vs.110).aspx
My solution was to add a simple shutdown-timer in the form, which alerts users to saving their data before the program close att 4 AM.
If i need to upgrade, i just replace the .exe on the network.
Ugly and dirty, yes... but worked like a charm for the past 2 years.
good luck!

Does isolated storage contents survive an update?

If I write a license file to isolated storage in a vb.net winforms app, and the app then undergoes a minor update, does the license file get "carried over" somehow during the update?
Isolated storage seems to use the full version number as the lowest level directory name which makes me think it doesn't.
The license file is needed to allow full use of the app and I don't want users to have to re-enter their license code after an update.
Not sure how the update will be done yet - either Inno setup or Installshield LE.
Any advice appreciated.
If your app is a WinForm one, I advice you not to use IsolatedStorage, which is a little too restrictive and uncustomizable. The IsolatedStorage isn't overriden in Windows Phone and Metro apps but (if I remember well) is in Win Forms. To conclude, it would be better to use a file in another location (like AppData/Roaming/YourCoolAppName), and it has the advantage for you to know exactly where the data is stored.

How do I distribute updates to a Access database front end?

I've got an Access 2007 database that I developed which connects to SQL Server for the actual data storage. I used the Package Solution Wizard to create a distributable installer which included access runtime (with an ACCDE file) which I went around and installed on 15 or so PCs. Anyway, my question is, what is the best way to distribute updates to this database? Right now I'd need to go around and remove and reinstall. That's not a problem... I was just wondering if there was another way.
I've tried leaving the front end on a network share but it seems that most people suggest storing the front-end on the local machine, which makes sense. The problems I've run into when I leave it on a network share (at least with Access 2003 mdbs) is that I find myself needing to compact and repair often and I also have to kill the open sessions (user's who have the file open) when upgrading. I would imagine it could also hypothetically create an unnecessary bottleneck if the user was not on the local network.
Automating front-end distribution is trivial. It's a problem that has been solved repeatedly. Tony Toews's http://autofeupdater.com is one such solution that is extremely easy to implement and completely transparent to the end user.
We developed a vbscript 'launcher' for our access apps. That is what is linked to on the start menu of user's pcs and it does the following.
It checks a version.txt file located on a network share to see whether it contains different text to a locally stored copy
If the text is different it copies the access mdb and the new version.txt to the user's hard drive.
Finally it runs the mdb in access
In order to distribute an update to the user's pc all that is required is to change the text in version.txt on the network share.
Perhaps you can implement something similar to this
Make a batch file on the server (network drive).
Create a shortcut link to that batch file.
Copy the shortcut to User's Desktop.
When user double-clicks on shortcut, it will copy a fresh copy from network to local.
Replace old database.adp on the server drive when you update a new version.
Each user gets a copy of database.adp on their machine.
Remove Security warning when opening file from network share is here.
Batch File
#ECHO OFF
REM copy from network drive to local
xcopy "Your_Network_Drive\database.adp" "C:\User\database.adp" /Y /R /F
REM call your database file - Access 2007
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\MSAccess.EXE" "C:\User\database.adp"
This is a very old post and I used the autofeupdater until it stopped working so I wrote one of my own and it has evolved over the last few years into something that I have used with many clients. It's so simple to use and there is no interface. Just an EXE and a very simple config file.
Please check it out here. I can also help with custom solutions if none of the configurations work for your needs. http://www.dafran.ca/MS-Access-Front-End-Loader.aspx
After trying all of the solutions above (not exactly these solutions but these are the common suggestions in the Access community), I developed a system entirely within Access using VBA that allows an admin DB to create and publish objects to client DBs without the need for user intervention or management of multiple DB files.
This approach has several benefits:
1. It simplifies the development process by having a dedicated environment (admin DB) for development and testing totally separate from the client DBs.
2. It simplifies the update/distribution process by allowing a developer to push out updates in real time that client DBs can implement in the background, without involving users. Can also allow devs to roll back to previous versions if desired.
3. It could be used as a kind of change management system within Access for developers who want to commit multiple changes to objects and modules and retain past changes.
4. It allows for easier user access control by allowing an admin to easily assign certain objects to specific users/roles without needing to maintain multiple versions of the DB.
I will hopefully post the code to GitHub soon, I just have to get clearance from my workplace to release it. I will edit this post to include the link when I have.
We have usually kept the Access front ends on network drives, and just put up with the need to compact and repair on a regular basis. You will probably find you need to do that even when they are installed locally, anyway.
If you must have it installed locally, there are various tools which will enable you to "push out" software updates, and the guys over on ServerFault would have more information on those. Assuming such tools aren't available, the only other option I can think of is to write a small loader program that checks the local .MDB against a master copy on the server, and re-copies it across if they are different, before then launching the MDB.