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Opinions please
Posted: 15 Oct 09 11:28 AM
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I have a full fledged .net application that I use for adding line items to quotes.
We are in the process of integrating this quoting mechanism with SLX Opportuities.
I can easily launch the exisiting application from a button in sales logix passing required parameters using a shell command, but this incurs a maintenance burden of ensuring a separate application is installed and up to date. Also making sure path statements are correct is a huge administrative pain.
I have tried wrapping the application into a .net extension but I can't get it to load in the extensions manager due to dependency issues.
Error: One or more dependencies of 'my quoting application' were not found.
There are alot of dependencies and some of those are external unmanged dlls
From an overall work/maintenance issue It appears I have to choose between the lesser of two evils.
Any opinions on this? The installed application does have an auto update feature that works well once the application is properly executed if that sways your opinion.
Please be candid, I really want honest opinions.
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Re: Opinions please
Posted: 15 Oct 09 2:16 PM
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I ran into a similar issue recently. We had tried referencing the dll's in the project, including them as supporting material and even trying to include them as resources. None of this would deploy the dll's that were not initially picked up by the extension manager.
The solution that we found was to reference a type from the library somehwere. It doesn't have to be called or even initialized, so you can use, for example:
MyMissingDependency.MyClass temp = null;
This was enough to then have the extension manager recognize and pick up the references. It's definitely a hack, but the only thing that we found to work around this issue. |
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Re: Opinions please
Posted: 16 Oct 09 12:22 AM
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I do think that you'd be able to get it working as an .NET extension of some kind. Eric's suggestion sounds promising. Another idea would be to have the actual .NET extension be a bootstrapper. It could check some URL for a possible update and then if one is available it could download and run the install, if no update is available it would just launch the already installed version of the app.
However, I would probably consider just having the app be a ClickOnce deployed app - the idea I mentioned above is something that is already built-into .NET as the ClickOnce deployment strategy. I love ClickOnce. 
Anyway, some ideas to consider. |
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Re: Opinions please
Posted: 16 Oct 09 10:32 AM
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Thanks for your input Ryan
I've tried to build the app as a click-once app unfortunately, the unmanged latebound dependencies don't let me set references in the project and I haven't figured out a good way to ensure those files are copied to the executable directory. I have a separate deployment project to make sure the all of the dependencies including some from the MFC C++ redistributables and ATL classes are installed correctly.
OpenGL and 3D graphics are so much fun.
The bootstrapper concept sounds promising though. I'll investigate that and try to get that to work. The app in question is already deployed and in use by our current quoting system so deployment is not my major concern. I'm trying to alleviate some of the administration overhead of keeping individual machines configured correctly. I can even use a shell command to launch the app with the required parameters. It just feels so '90s if you know what I mean. |
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Re: Opinions please
Posted: 16 Oct 09 1:58 PM
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Maybe it would work to install the non-managed dependencies separately in an install. Is it likely these would ever change? Then just drop them from the ClickOnce deployment since they'll already exist and be registered on the machines. Then the code app itself could still update via ClickOnce. Just an idea.
I hear you. Doing some funky stuff like using .NET Extensions to bootstrap apps is very old-skool. But, I do think it would work, albeit a bit hacky.
-Ryan |
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Re: Opinions please
Posted: 19 Apr 11 1:00 PM
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Update on this.
We opted to keep the Quoting application a separate application and use a .net extension to launch the app with appropriate parameters. The launcher .net extension now has a datagrid of the quotes initiated by the current user and the status of those quotes in our quoting system. We also provided links to associated Sales logix Opportnities and can launch into those form the .net extension.
The quoting app has its own installer an updater to kepp it updated and current.
We aslo added a check in the launcher to make sure the app is installed. If it is not installed, the launching button(s) are disabled.
This is all installed and running in our production environment.
Thanks for opinions on this. |
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