Sharing Hyperview and the M14 over a network

We recommend setting up Hyperview and the most recent M14 file in a shared location so that they can be used by anyone with access to your network. Usually remote users would have a shortcut to the shared Hyperview application.

Sharing Hyperview over a network is easy. You put the Hyperview browser application plus the DBDOC M14 document into a shared folder on a LAN. Give people access to it and, by way of a simple shortcut, they can access the latest DBDOC M14 file, even when you update it. You can get a copy of Hyperview suitable for installing in a shared network location from the Hyperview mini-kit in the file hyperview_kit.exe.

Sharing Hyperview from a central network location means that users have only a shortcut on their own computers that does not change when you update the Hyperview browser (for example when GMCL releases a new version of Hyperview). Even if you update the DBDOC version, you do not need to change their shortcut.

Sharing the M14 file from a central network location means that users will always automatically see the most recent or appropriate M14 in their browsers. Most installations rebuild the M14 file regularly, and it is convenient for users to automatically see the most recent build.

Step 1: Choosing a location for the shared folder

In order to share Hyperview and the M14 with users, you first need to choose a suitable shared location accessible to DBDOC users. DBDOC users will run this central copy of Hyperview using their desktop shortcuts.

It is much better for users to access Hyperview from a folder on their own LAN than from across a slow bridge or Wide Area Network (WAN). It is therefore best to choose a shared folder location on the same LAN as your target Hyperview users so they can run Hyperview via a high speed connection. In this context, 10 Mbps is slow, 100 Mbps fast enough and 1000 Mbps is extremely fast.

Note: If there are users who need to use Hyperview without having access to the shared network folder, they can install Hyperview directly on their computer. See the article Installing Hyperview on an individual computer for more information.

Step 2: Installing the Hyperview mini-kit

The next step is to install the Hyperview mini-kit. The most common way to do this is to install it on your own computer, then copy it to a location from which other users may access it. Think of it as assembling DBDOC before moving it to where it will actually be used.

1. Log on with an administrator account.

   Note: You only need to log on with the administrator account to install Hyperview. Once it is installed, you can run Hyperview without administrator privileges.

2. In Windows Explorer, navigate to the DBDOC Kits folder of the DBDOC installation CD and double-click Hyperview_kit.exe.

   Note: You can also find the Hyperview kit in the DBDOC\PROGRAMS\Hyperview subfolder of the DBDOC installation on your BuildPlus computer. You can also contact us to download the this kit via FTP.

Step 3: Copying and sharing the Hyperview folder

You have now installed the Hyperview mini-kit on your own (the administrator's) computer. You will likely want to share DBDOC from another computer due to access and permission issues. In this step you will move DBDOC to the location from which DBDOC users will access it.

Copying the Hyperview folder to a networked computer

There are multiple ways to copy the folder to the computer on which you wish to share DBDOC, but in this document we are going to show you how to copy the folder over a network. The first step we are going to perform is to create a network drive on your computer pointing to the computer on which you are going to share Hyperview.

To map a network drive on your computer right-click on My Computer (or Computer on Vista) and select Map Network Drive.

The following screen will open:

We want to use the Browse button to browse to the computer and folder where you want to copy DBDOC.

After hitting the Browse button you should see something like:

Select the computer name and folder that you wish to map a network drive to. For my example, I am selecting a folder named DBDOC on a computer named Loki and it is being mapped as the R: drive.

The network drive will show up in Windows Explorer as whatever letter you chose to map it to.

Now what we would like to do is copy the DBDOC folder created on your computer to the network drive we created. To do this, right-click on the DBDOC folder on your computer and select Copy. Access the network drive through Windows Explorer. Right-click on it and choose Paste.

Sharing the folder with the rest of the network

Once the folder has been copied onto the workstation you will be sharing Hyperview from we have to share this folder with the rest of the network. To do this follow the steps listed below:

1. Open Windows Explorer on the computer on which you will be sharing DBDOC.
2. Right-click on the folder to which you copied the DBDOC folder.
3. Select Sharing and Security from the popup menu. The Sharing window will open.
4. Select Share this Folder. For the Share Name, we are going to call it DBDOC.

Once the folder has been shared it is available to other users on the network. The next thing we have to do is create a shortcut so other users on the network can copy it to their computer to access DBDOC. This is covered in the next step.

Step 4: Creating a network shortcut

Now that the Hyperview browser is in its shared location, the next step is to create a shortcut to it that can be used by any user on the local network to run Hyperview. This step can be done from any computer from which you can see the shared network location where Hyperview is located.

Finding the shared Hyperview folder

To create a shortcut that is usable over the network, browse to the shared DBDOC location, through My Network Places. My Network Places can be accessed through Windows Explorer. Once you have located the 'computer on the network with the shared folder containing Hyperview, open the DBDOC\Hyperview\Programs folder (this is where the Hyperview application is located). The screen you see at this point should look similar to the screenshot below:

Creating the shortcut

To create the shortcut, right-click on hyperview_winsock.exe and select Create Shortcut.

Renaming the shortcut

Now that a shortcut has been created on the desktop, you must verify that it is set up properly.

The shortcut that was created is called something similar to: Shortcut to hyperview_winsock.exe.

To rename it to something that identifies it as DBDOC, right-click on it and choose Rename.

Verifying the shortcut

The next thing to do is to verify that the shortcut was created properly. To do this right-click on the shortcut and choose Properties. The two fields we want to take a look at are Target and Start in.

The Target path should look similar to the following:

\\Computer Name\DBDOC\Hyperview\Programs\hyperview_winsock.exe

Your Start in directory should look similar to the following:

\\Computer Name\DBDOC\Hyperview\Programs\

Specifying the location of the M14 file in the shortcut

Once we have verified that the proper paths are in place, we are going to tell it where to locate your M14 file.

When the Hyperview kit is installed on your computer a directory called \\Computer Name\DBDOC\Hyperview\data is created. This is where the M14 files are located. You need to specify this folder in the Target: field so Hyperview will know where to load an M14 file from.

Here is an easy way to do this:

1. Select the path in the Start in text box and press CTRL+C.
2. Place the cursor after the hyperview_winsock.exe in the Target text box and insert a space and two double quotes ("").
3. Insert the cursor between the quotation marks and press CTRL+V. This will insert the following path, with quotations on either side:

"\\Computer Name\Hyperview\Programs"

The Target: field now looks like:

\\Computer Name\DBDOC\Hyperview\Programs\hyperview_winsock.exe "\\Computer Name\Hyperview\Programs"

We are going to delete the Programs from the path and replace it with data\*.m14.

1. Delete Programs from "\\Computer Name\Hyperview\Programs" in the Target: field.
2. Add data\*.M14 to the end of the path. The text *.M14 tells Hyperview to open the most recent M14 file in the data folder.

The Target: field should now look like this:

\\Computer Name\DBDOC\Hyperview\Programs\hyperview_winsock.exe "\\Computer Name\Hyperview\data\*.M14"

Your shortcut should look like this:

Copy the shortcut to the desktops of DBDOC users on other machines

This shortcut can now be copied to the desktop of any user who needs to be able to access your latest M14 file.

Step 5: Rebuilding your M14

Rebuild your project, and put the new M14 file in the shared folder.

Rebuild in BuildPlus

Open BuildPlus. On the Build menu, click Build.

If there are any errors, stop and contact GMCL.

Make sure that Hypreview users can access the new M14

1. On a computer that uses Hyperview over the network, open Hyperview. Hyperview should open your project.
2. On the Help menu, click Current M14 File Revision. Check the M14 Compile Started date.
3. If Hyperview did not open the new M14 automatically, check the shortcut target:
   1. Right-click the shortcut and then click Properties.
   2. Click the Shortcut tab.
   3. Check that the Target is something like "<Hyperview install location>\Hyperview_winsock.exe" "<shared M14s location>\*.M14". The wildcard (*) tells Hyperview to open the newest M14.

Step 6: Applying command line options to customize your shortcut

Once your the shortcut is set up, you can customize it with command line switches. Essentially, it is a way to control how users use your M14.

Command line switches can be added to the end of the shortcut in the following format:

<Path to Hyperview_winsock.exe> "<Path to the M14 file>" </Command Line Switch>

For example, on the shortcut I created, to disable the File menu Open function, the target (Target: field) of my shortcut looked like this:

\\Loki\DBDOC\Hyperview\Programs\hyperview_winsock.exe "\\Loki\DBDOC\Hyperview\data\*.m14" /noOpen

or (for a mapped network drive)

R:\DBDOC\Hyperview\Programs\hyperview_winsock.exe "R:\DBDOC\Hyperview\data\*.m14" /noOpen

The following are some of the command line options you can specify when opening Hyperview. For a complete list of Hyperview command line options, see Launching Hyperview from the command line.

Step 7: Configuring BuildPlus to automatically copy the M14 to the shared location

The last step in setting up sharing DBDOC involves BuildPlus. Every time you build a new M14, you will want that most recent M14 to be the one shared across the network. To ensure this, you have to setup BuildPlus to copy your M14 file to this shared directory after each build. To do this:

1. Open BuildPlus.
2. On the Tools menu, click Project Options.
3. On the Project Options window there is a section where you can tell BuildPlus the directory to copy your M14 to when the build is complete. On the image below this section is surrounded by a red box.

   

4. To specify the directory to have the M14 copied to, click the Browse button and navigate to the directory, either as a permanently mapped drive letter (e.g. X:\DBDOC\Hyperview\Data) or as a shared folder (e.g. \\Loki\Hyperview\Data \\Loki\Hyperview\Data on the network). The DBDOC build user must have write access to the shared folder, either by having it mapped that way (e.g. X:\) or by having write access to the \\Loki\DBDOC folder.