structured application on a shared drive

[jang at jang.nl]

Alan,

Having the structapps file (or text insets linked to a local structapps file) on a network drive should not cause too much traffic, as the file is only read when FM starts. Also, one of my customers has everything on a network drive and the network latency problem only kicks in when they are opening and closing 100s of files within minutes. One small file with no graphics should not be a big problem.

As for file locking: I tested and there does not seem to be any file locking when FM reads the file on startup. The lock file only appears when I open the file in FM to edit it. The fact that I can edit and save the structapps file without any changed behavior of FM - until I explicitly tell FM to read the struct apps, or restart FM, tells me that there is no monitoring of the file contents, i.e. the file does not remain open while FM runs. I could run a test script to make sure but I believe there is no reason to do so.

Just wanted to complete the discussion on this.
Jang


> 
> Message: 4
> Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 08:30:43 -0500
> From: Alan Houser <<arh at groupwellesley.com>>
> To: jang at jang.nl, <framers at lists.frameusers.com>
> Subject: Re: structured application on a shared drive
> Message-ID: <548EE283.3050102 at groupwellesley.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; Format="flowed"
> 
> I have two concerns about putting a structured app on a network drive:
> 
> - FrameMaker is rather intolerant of network latency. A network-based
> structured app may be more crash-prone.
> 
> - FrameMaker's file locking is rather aggressive, so concurrency issues
> may arise. This is from memory, and I haven't tested it on FrameMaker
> 12. I believe the structured app files are read and retained in memory
> without a filesystem lock, but I would want to confirm this.
> 
> Both of these issues, or their absence, should be easy to identify
> through testing.
> 
> 
> 
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