| 132 Virginia Ave, Hawthorne, QLD 4171 |
| Phone: 07 3395 7733, Fax: 07 3395 7732 |
| http://www.lennox.com.au eMail: doug@lennox.com.au |
| LILAC File Master Module |
| Microsoft Windows networking for file-server, Microsoft
Office and general Windows applications is difficult to
work with, flawed and unreliable, increasingly so with
Windows Vista. Where remote connections from geographically distant sites are required the situation becomes more complex and difficult, and many appliance based Virtual Private Network "solutions" are complex flawed, unreliable and expensive. |
| Lennox Computer offer a clean and effective solution to
this dilemma which uses the same straight-forward
TCP/IP based Local & Wide Area networking
client/server type of connections that LILAC itself uses. Typically the LILAC server PC will also perform the role of file-server for File Master VPN operations, though it is possible to route the connections to another PC if desired. Traditionally Lennox Computer establish a folder on the hard drive of the LILAC server called C:\Work which is the root for all network file-server activity, and which is supported by standard backup facilities associated with the LILAC data-base backup. The File Master module provides access to the Work folder on the server from any locally or remotely connected LILAC workstation without involving Microsoft Networking or any 3rd party VPN appliance. The client end of the File Master module presents a simple file & folder navigation tree-structure, with a single mouse click operation which down-loads a copy of a file from the server (say Excel or Word), saves it on the local hard drive and invokes the appropriate program using file associations on the client computer. File Master also deploys an invisible daemon process on the Client Computer called File Watcher -for each down-loaded file. File watcher checks the modification time for each down-loaded file and when a modified copy of the file is saved on the local hard drive, File Watcher uploads the new version back to the server. |
| Shared File Checkout Administration |
| When a file is downloaded from the server by a particular
operator who may be physically remote from the server
location, and from other operators, a situation arises where
the same file may be downloaded by another operator,
without either operator having knowledge of the conflict. If
this situation is not addressed then one operator will "win"
in the sense the version downloaded first and re-saved last
will overwrite the other operators work. LILAC File Master resolves this problem by implementing a file "Check out" data-base on the server, and prohibiting further downloads of a particular file until the 1st operator releases his checkout rights. This is a much better solution than Microsoft's file locking concept which is terribly vulnerable to deadly embrace conditions. |
