HOWTO: Distribute VFP COM Components used with MTS

• Microsoft Visual FoxPro for Windows, version 6.0

SUMMARY

One of the great new features of Visual FoxPro 6.0 is improved server support for Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS). However, associated with MTS are distribution issues that one must consider.

MORE INFORMATION

The Visual FoxPro 6.0 Setup Wizard can be used to distribute normal Visual FoxPro (VFP) run-time applications and ones which use the Component Object Model (COM) components (servers). The Setup Wizard registers COM components using normal self-register routines. You can also use the Wizard to register your servers remotely using the distributed version of Component Object Model (DCOM).

Unfortunately, while all of this is good news for normal applications, ones using MTS require a little extra work that is not provided by the Setup Wizard. When you register a VFP COM Component in an MTS Package, MTS makes some Registry alterations to redirect the server to use the Mtx.exe run- time file. None of these Registry changes are picked up by the VFP Setup Wizard.

For distributing MTS applications, you need to use the MTS export mechanism that creates redistribution setups. These facilities are excellent and should provide everything you need for distributing your MTS components. For base clients, which use these components, you can use the VFP Setup Wizard or some other setup engine.

To use the Export utility in MTS, simply select the Package that you want to distribute and select Export[ASCII 133] from the Action menu. The resulting setups consist of both the client and server installations. The client setup actually incorporates all the necessary DCOM settings for a client to access a particular MTS component on another computer.

REFERENCES

Microsoft Transaction Server Help; search on: "Exporting Packages, Transaction Server"; "ExportPackage method (PackageUtil)"; "Distribution, Package"

Visual FoxPro Help; search on: "Setup Wizard"

Additional query words: PGFest600 Transaction Server Distributed Applications kbVFp600 kbCOMt kbMTS

Keywords :
Version : WINDOWS:6.0
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbhowto