SIMS and .net Framework 2
As we have discussed at Secondary Technical Forum meetings over the last eighteen months, the next version of SIMS .net (the June 2008 Update Release) will require Microsoft’’s .net Framework 2 to be installed on client workstations.
Workstations running FMS 6.91 or higher will already have had .net Framework 2 installed as part of the migration to Microsoft SQL.
If you wish to discuss this further, please drop me an email. Alternatively, please feel free to leave a comment below.
Sam Prince:
Hi John,
Good to see you”re blogging! I subscribed to your feed the other day, but I don”t go through my feed reader very often at the moment (too many other things occupying my time!).
I found an interesting gotcha with FMS this morning that you might want to be aware of: basically we have staff running FMS in Finance who use more than one database (for our separate pre-2004 database) and they have shortcuts set up on their desktop to take them directly into the relevant database.
We set their shortcuts up by going into FDS, selecting a database and clicking the create shortcut button. That makes a shortcut to fds.exe with some parameters for the database. Strangely though, it doesn”t put FMSLoad in front of the fds.exe, so it doesn”t check for updates when they use those links. Worse still, it’’s been letting our finance staff use FMS version 6.100 against a 6.104 database for several weeks now without bringing up any warnings! Hopefully it hasn”t caused any damage, but I”ll admit I”m a bit nervous.
And their FMS update installer still needs to be run as an admin as of May release v2! I notice June is now available in SOLUS, but luckily I have time to wait and see the fallout on the forums before updating.
20 June 2008, 12:02 pmJohn Howarth:
Hi Sam,
The Finance Database Selector executable (FDS.EXE) should silently run FMSLOAD.EXE without the need to add anything to the shortcut. Saying that, we haven”t yet had the opportunity to test beyond 6.100, so we”ll take a look and let everyone know how we get on (may be the end of next week I”m afraid).
It’’s very worrying that the FMS 6.100 client works on a database which has been upgraded to 6.104. I”ll raise this with the FMS Product Manager when I meet him next week.
Thanks also for letting us know about the 6.104 installer requiring admin rights. Did you say it needs such high permissions to run because it writes to C:\WINDOWS? Again, we”ve yet to test this ourselves but will report back as soon as.
20 June 2008, 3:11 pmSam Prince:
Hi John,
Whilst FDS.exe *does* run FMSload silently, the shortcuts you make using FDS (the “Create FMS Shortcut” button within the main FDS window) *don”t* have FMSload in their command line, so the advice I”ve been given in my Support Case is:
—
When you upgrade to the latest version it is advisable that you log into the workstation for the first time to go through the start | all programs | sims applications | FMSSQL | Sims FMS Module
—
Still no word yet on whether any damage might have been done to our database though. It really brings home the fact that backups aren”t necessarily that useful if the damage has been done “silently” in the background - even if we restore back to the point when the update went on it”d be a nightmare to reenter all the data that’’s gone in since. We”ve not had any complaints of iffy numbers so far though, so I think/hope/pray we might be in the clear.
As for the installing as an admin thing, IIRC it tries to put a file called implode.dll into c:\windows\system32. That’’s fine for Power Users and for Administrators, but no good for standard Users.
Cheers,
Sam
23 June 2008, 3:02 pm