relocate database (and application) to network file server

[sbbaker65]

I have an installation of V8 on W2k server. The install drive is FAT, which has allowed users to bypass security. I want to move the database to a CIFS share that has user-level security and commercial backup software.

Has anyone attempted this process? Are there any pointers on how to accomplish this? I realize the simple answer is to just move the files. But, are there hidden gotchas?

Steve

[Zaphod]

If users don't have read and write access to the database files, then you'll get the error message "cannot update cursor." Just make sure that the users have write access, and you should be ok. You can set up passwords to restrict user access to different modules inside powerchurch.

[NeilZ]

I have an installation of V8 on W2k server. The install drive is FAT, which has allowed users to bypass security. I want to move the database to a CIFS share that has user-level security and commercial backup software.

Has anyone attempted this process? Are there any pointers on how to accomplish this? I realize the simple answer is to just move the files. But, are there hidden gotchas?

Steve

I moved our database from a WinXP system, to a W2K server with NTFS. The move itself was easy, but as Zaphod points out, users must have R/W permissions to the directory, at the minimum.

I just made it open to all users, that was the easiest way. Again, as pointed out, Powerchurch will control access from within, however, if your users create custom reports, or create reports and save to file, they will need to be able to add new files to the PC+ directory. As far as backups, I have the system backed up daily via backup software, but I also make two PC+ backups on Sunday. One stays in the safe at church, the other comes home with me.

You said that the users were able to bypass security, what exactly did they do ??

[Zaphod]

The only thing I could think of would be if someone used an external application of some kind to access the foxpro data tables via odbc. There's no good way around that. Version 9 is going to have all sorts of auditing features to help you figure out if something like that has been done.

Now, to stray off topic...

Neil's comment reminds me of a very common tech support issue. A lot of people have some sort of external (to PowerChurch) backup system. That's fine, and does serve a purpose, but it's a good idea to make a backup inside PowerChurch as well. There have been many times I've talked to someone and the solution to their problem was as simple as restoring a file from a backup. They aren't able to do this because their only backup is a tape backup stored off-campus, and if they did have it, they don't know how to retrieve the information off the tape-that's the tech guy's job.

Some folks may think Neil's backup process is excessive. Those folks have obviously never suffered a data loss.

[sbbaker65]

Please understand that I come from a security conscious company. Any user that has access to the server containing the software and data files, being on FAT, has the ability to access the data. There are no file access rights on a FAT. Whether the application has user-level security is immaterial.

[sbbaker65]

I agree with Zaphod that it is a good idea to use the backup facilities that are provided by the software vendor. However, this needs to be tempered with an understanding of the skill level of the user(s). I would love to have the database backed up using the vendor-supplied tools, but the only facility that I saw was to local floppy/CDW. I cannot depend upon the local user(s) to maintain appropriate data management of floppies (or CDW). I am still waiting for a backup to disk that can be scheduled through the scheduler, or better yet, a database back-end like Sybase, Oracle, etc. that has builtin backup facilities that integrate with network backup management software like BackupExec, Networker, etc. I would even settle for a MySQL back-end. Until then, I'll just trust that the FoxPro database is closed during my nightly backups.

[NeilZ]

I agree with Zaphod that it is a good idea to use the backup facilities that are provided by the software vendor. However, this needs to be tempered with an understanding of the skill level of the user(s). I would love to have the database backed up using the vendor-supplied tools, but the only facility that I saw was to local floppy/CDW. I cannot depend upon the local user(s) to maintain appropriate data management of floppies (or CDW). I am still waiting for a backup to disk that can be scheduled through the scheduler, or better yet, a database back-end like Sybase, Oracle, etc. that has builtin backup facilities that integrate with network backup management software like BackupExec, Networker, etc. I would even settle for a MySQL back-end. Until then, I'll just trust that the FoxPro database is closed during my nightly backups.

Question on your first reply ... why is your server running FAT ??

Backups can be done in PC+ to any type of removable drive, even USB Thumb Drvies. As far as the database being closed during nightly backups, you have to rely on the users to log out of the application. Its a training issue more than anything else.

Our server backups run at 2 AM, and all our users have been trained to log off their machines at the end of the day.

Bottom line, you have to trust your users sometime ... the most dependable of which is probably the church secretary. Since you can now (in v9.0) authorize backups, without authorizing restores, you can have the secretary do a daily backup to CD just before she leaves.

[jeffkoke]

Steve,

As an FYI, here's what I'm running: Our (FreeBSD) server has a set of mirrored hard drives (RAID 0+1) and a third/separate HD on the internal IDE controller. Let's not go down the "which RAID is better" road as this is what came with the server, so we use it.

Every night a backup script runs mounting the separate HD, does a complete UFS dump of every partition on the filesystem and then dismounts the HD. The backup script is smart enough to look for the existance of any PC+ users. If there are PC+ users running PC+, the script will send an email indicating so and then shut down. This way we don't backup PC+ with the potential of any database files being open.

On a weekly basis, I run the backup program within PC+ to a CD. This CD is stored on-site. On an aperiodic basis, I also run the backup program within PC+ to my personal USB memory stick. I keep a stand-alone version of PC+ at home to monitor and run reports. So, the backup on the memory stick is tested often.

I like Neil's idea of an off-site copy and at times consider my copy at home to be that copy. It would probably be a better idea to have an off-site CD. I'd just need to remember to ferry it back and forth on a weekly basis.

Just thought I'd share.

My $.07 worth,
Jeff

[NeilZ]

Steve,

I like Neil's idea of an off-site copy and at times consider my copy at home to be that copy. It would probably be a better idea to have an off-site CD. I'd just need to remember to ferry it back and forth on a weekly basis.

Just thought I'd share.

My $.07 worth,
Jeff

Jeff,
what I've been doing lately is taking my memory stick, doing the weekly backup to that, along with one to a zip drive kept at church. Taking the memory stick home, then transfering that to a zip drive I keep there.

Alot of steps, but I feel safer !!

[BrianShoe]

Folks -

This thread [b]ALMOST[/b] has the answer to a problem that's been vexing us here in Canton MA: that PC+ is "hard coded" to have the database files in a directory immediately under the program location, rather than allowing the user to specify where the data files live.

We'd very much like have the *.DBF files live in a location away from the PowerChurch program files. Reason: we now have our church set up on a proper Windows network, with a domain, two completely redundant (mirrored) servers, a Distributed File System, and regular automatic backups of all data areas onto additional physical hard drives in the servers. We need to address making periodic backups to CD-ROM that we take off site, but that's a separate matter.

Automatic backups work for us because we have each login user's "My Documents" folder mapped to a specific area on the [b]SERVER[/b] hard drive (automatically replicated from one server to the other). Because of the apparent PC+ limitation on where it expects to see the data, we've had to do some finagling to get the PC+ data files included in the automatic backups.

I appreciate that PC+ has the backup/restore ability within the program; I need to point this out to the other members of our technology committee. However, from a practical point of view, it's entirely unreasonable to expect our church secretary to run regular backups of PC+. We can barely get her to log off the system when she leaves.

Has anyone succeeded in "relocating" the PowerChurch data files - and having PowerChurch "know" where the files reside? If so, how?

(BTW, we use "Second Copy" for our automatic backups. If you haven't seen it, you folks should check it out - the utility is powerful, smart, and quite easy to set up. It's also not that expensive.)

Thanks -
Brian Shoemaker
First Parish Unitarian Universalist, Canton MA

[jeffkoke]

Brian,

A couple of thoughts:
- If you've not installed PC+ on a network drive, give that a try. I have installed PC+ on the I:\ drive and only PC+ users have access to it. Our automatic mapping process that runs when a user logs in, maps all the drives for which the user has permissions. Like your setup, all of my user's personal/work data is stored on the H:\ drive that only that user can "see."

- I think that if you really get down to brass tacks, you'll agree that while PC+ can be installed in a network environment, the application resides on the client. In other words, you can put the data files in a separate location from the client. When you run netsetup (now netsetup9), the client PC is initialized (along with some other things) to point to the data location.

With the setup we have, any user who has a PC with a CDRW drive can perform a backup (assuming that they have permissions to do so within PowerChurch).

Are you're trying/wanting to do true data replication (from a database perspective) between the servers?

Hope this helps,
Jeff

[NeilZ]

Don't forget, PC Plus updates some application files located in the PC+ root directory on your server. I believe it includes the data dictionary, etc. These should be backed up too, which is why I do the entire PC+ directory tree for our tape backups.

I finally installed a third drive in our old server running Win2K Server - now I cam mirror the server drives, and have an automatic backup and redundency. I still do the weekly backup for offsite after services on Sunday, along with the nightly tape backups.

[BrianShoe]

Thanks to Jeff for the response.

Yes, we've enabled replication via the Distributed File System (which is part of the Windows 2000 that we have running on the redundant servers). In case you ask, we have Windows XP Professional (SP2) on the workstations.

Please understand something here. When I talk about the Server, I mean a true server on a Windows domain. Our two servers (set up to be redundant, with data replication between them) are actually "headless" (no monitor, no keyboard); those of us doing SysAdmin stuff can only access the servers via Remote Desktop.

Jeff's question: our PC+ is installed on the network resource (the servers - both of them), and ONLY accessible to users via the mapped-drive connection. Thus, we have PC+ operating in a classical client/server setup.

The point I was making is this: program files and data files are different animals. I've installed other software packages that happily offered the option, during installation, for the user to specify where the data files would live (heck, all it takes is a text string that gets stuffed into a pathname variable when the program starts up).

The DATA (and configuration) files need to be backed up regularly; the program files don't. (Yes, I'm aware of the PC+ backup facility - we use it often. I'm talking about automated backups via Second Copy.)

In addition, the REPLICATION that occurs between the two servers should only have to deal with contents of DBF and CDX files, not the various executables.

So - back to my original question (though I think I know the answer for now). In the Help -> About screen, PowerChurch explicitly shows the data directory path. Can the data directory be specified ? Is there any way to set that data directory to be someplace OTHER than directly in with, and under, the program files?

Brian Shoemaker
First Parish Unitarian Universalist, Canton MA

[Jeff]

PowerChurch works they way it does for many reasons. Some of which are historical, it has always worked that way, and some of which are a little more pratical. By default PCPLUS looks for its tables in a data folder of the location from where it was started. Some files are in the pcplus root folder such as report writer data dictionary and pclayout which holds settings for checks and labels. This is somewhat of a hold over from the days when all PCPLUS files used to be in the same folder.

Moving the EXE to the local hard drive opens up a new problem. If a new MR is released, it now has to somehow get down to local drive on every workstation. Including the workstation in the backroom that nobody thinks of but is used to run PCPLUS every other blue moon for some reason. This is one of the main reasons we have been reluctant to to change this. Now the new exe only has to be installed on the server and all users run the same version of the exe. If the users all have the exe on their local station and someone is running an older copy than everyone else you can have problems, not to mention it makes it that much harder to diagnose problems. (Sue has the problem, but Jane doesn't)

For the application we use internally to track customers and tech calls we have a loader app that checks the network to see if a newer version exists and copies it down to the local drive automatically if it is there. This works pretty well for us and makes sure everyone is running the latest version. It also lets us update the app in the middle of the day without having to kick everyone out of the app first. Moving to this type of architecture would require a bunch of internal changes to PCPLUS in order to make this happen. To give you an idea, just about everywhere we open a file would have to updated. It is something that is under consideration in a future verison, but it would be a significant allocation of time to make the change.

Here is what you can do though and this is not documented because it is not officially supported. If you copy the contents of the PCPLUS9 folder to the local drive, for example C:\PCPLUS9LOCAL. Create a shortcut to run the C:\PCPLUS9LOCAL\PCPLUS9.EXE, in the start in folder you can point it to the network drive or the folder with the data you want to access. So if the network drive is I:\ change the start in folder in the shortcut to I:\. If you have another set of data you want to access in the J:\TEST folder, create another shortcut with the start in pointing to that directory. You need to be carefull when using this approach in that you must make sure that all workstations not get updated with the new exe whenever a new MR is released.

[BrianShoe]

Thanks, Jeff - this is extremely helpful. I'll set up a "shadow installation" to check out the method you've described (sounds like this is what Jeff Koke and many of the other PC+ gurus out there are doing).

Moving the EXE to the local hard drive opens up a new problem. If a new MR is released, it now has to somehow get down to local drive on every workstation. Including the workstation in the backroom that nobody thinks of but is used to run PCPLUS every other blue moon for some reason. This is one of the main reasons we have been reluctant to to change this.

I apologize if I gave you the wrong idea of what we're trying to do.

(1) We're really only looking for an INSTALLATION option, not for something to change at will. Clearly, your point is a good one - if we have a networked setup and change something in one place, we'd better make sure we keep all the installations in synch. This is an issue of network management, not of program options.

(2) We're looking to keep the PC+ data files on a different DRIVE from the program - not on a different computer.
The replication process maintains mirror-image data directories. The automatic backup makes copies of the data directories.
The program belongs in the software directory on the servers. In the case of PC+, however, we had to install the entire package directly in the server DATA directory, to assure that replication and auto-backup will occur.

Again, thanks for the info. I have no problem re-pointing the "Start In" string in a program shortcut - had I realized that was the solution, I'd have done that weeks ago.