FormsAssistant 2: Form libraries modes of access
The preliminary specification for forms libraries is beginning to take shape. On this post I will present some ideas that .
1. The three different modes of access
FormsAssistant will handle three types of libraries:
- Personal libraries are stored on a user’s computer and are not meant to be shared.
- Shared libraries are stored on a network drive and are supposed to be shared by an entire organization (or at least some users).
- Remote libraries are a mixture of the two. There is a master copy of the library that is stored on a network drive, but local copies of the database are kept on the local disk.
Internally, all three types of libraries are the same, the only difference is the way FormsAssistant accesses them.
Personal and Remote libraries are accessed locally in read mode (i.e. browse and open the forms contained in them). Personal libraries are also accessed locally in write mode (i.e. modify, add or delete forms; restructure categories, etc.).
Shared libraries are accessed remotely for all modes, read and write while Remote libraries are only accessed remotely in write mode and also when checking for updates and update mode.
2. Performance considerations
Personal and Remote libraries are stored locally, and therefore their performance is optimal. Shared libraries performance will, of course, depend on the network performance.
Our suggestion for organizations using shared repositories of forms is to use primarily Shared libraries and only revert to Remote libraries if the browsing forms performance is unacceptable. A typical reason is when the Remote library is not stored in the local network (see below).
3. Sharing considerations
Personal libraries can be shared between different users, but they have to manually copy and update them as needed (of course this process can be automated using an external program that takes care of copying libraries from one system to another).
Shared and Remote libraries are shared by default. FormsAssistant will handle everything for you.
4. Libraries on the cloud
Users of libraries do not need to be physically connected to the same LAN to be able to access them. FormsAssistant will happily work with Web folders to access truly Remote libraries.
In the future, we are planning to offer a hosted solution that will enable you to host your libraries in a centralized location and make them accessible to users all around the globe.
