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Small Mac-based site.

PostPosted: Thu Mar 05, 2020 11:27 am
by pricerc
We have a potential one-user (for now) site who uses a Mac.

I assume it's just a case of getting a VM running with a SQL Express instance, but thought I'd check if anyone had any experiences to share?

Re: Small Mac-based site.

PostPosted: Thu Mar 05, 2020 4:03 pm
by SBarnes
The only vm platform I have experience with using on the mac was virtual box a few year back because Xamarin used it for the android emulator, it was reasonably stable but it was starting android not windows.

It does have the obvious advantage of being free.

I've used vmware and got Jiwa going but that was under windows.

Re: Small Mac-based site.

PostPosted: Sat Mar 21, 2020 3:09 pm
by pricerc
So I had my 'Mac expert' have a go at installing Jiwa using CodeWeavers https://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover-mac but it seems it has a 'Windows installer' version older than V5.

Going to see if we can grab an installed version from a Windows box and run up the executable, but not holding out much hope at this point.

Re: Small Mac-based site.

PostPosted: Sat Mar 21, 2020 3:39 pm
by SBarnes
I never considered this as I've only done dual boot with windows and Linux but see https://www.howtogeek.com/187359/5-ways ... -on-a-mac/ and https://www.howtogeek.com/186907/how-to ... boot-camp/ may be bootcamp is an option?

The other option is VMWare fusion which is just over $100 AUD

Re: Small Mac-based site.

PostPosted: Sat Mar 21, 2020 5:54 pm
by pricerc
I know about the virtualisation options, but this is a single-user, very non-technical person who uses a Mac. So the CodeWeaver option has a lot of appeal, if we can make it work.

Re: Small Mac-based site.

PostPosted: Sun Mar 22, 2020 8:21 am
by pricerc
So it seems like installation using the Codeweaver (or WINE, which Codeweaver is based on) is breaking on the 'SQL Server' part of the install.

From what I've been able to learn with a 2 minute Google search; SQL Server won't run in WINE. It will run on Linux in a Docker container, though.

We're going to try parallels next. It seems the 'business' version has a 'single application mode', and is only USD 99/year.

This did lead me to think (in conjunction with a separate discussion about supporting other databases) if there would be a case for a 'client only' installation for Jiwa that excludes all the SQL 'server' components? Obviously, this version would be unable to create databases (even a demo one), but that may have uses outside of this discussion: e.g. in a larger network, it may be desirable to have a client install rolled out in a group policy, and they may not want people to be able to create their own databases.

Re: Small Mac-based site.

PostPosted: Sun Mar 22, 2020 8:27 am
by SBarnes
Hi Ryan,

I may have another alternative for you regarding this but I won't know until I get a reply on Monday for an email I sent yesterday to our director of professional services, so I'll let you know once I hear back.

Re: Small Mac-based site.

PostPosted: Sun Mar 22, 2020 9:47 am
by pricerc
SBarnes wrote:Hi Ryan,

I may have another alternative for you regarding this but I won't know until I get a reply on Monday for an email I sent yesterday to our director of professional services, so I'll let you know once I hear back.


Thanks Stuart.

At this stage, this is still an investigation for a low-value prospect (literally one user), but I'm also seeing that, if we can make it work, there is a whole market to be opened up, which is why I'm prepared to make a bit of an effort. If it means producing a 'canned' Parallels-based VM, and we include licensing for Parallels as a 'Mac support module for JIWA' in their annual license fee, then that would work for me.

btw, My 'Mac expert' is really cheap, since he's my son. He's a tinkerer who likes this kind of challenge. I would have got him on to this earlier, but he was on jury duty for two weeks and I didn't want to distract him from that.

Re: Small Mac-based site.

PostPosted: Sun Mar 22, 2020 11:12 am
by SBarnes
pricerc wrote:At this stage, this is still an investigation for a low-value prospect (literally one user), but I'm also seeing that, if we can make it work, there is a whole market to be opened up, which is why I'm prepared to make a bit of an effort.


The longer terms possibilities was my thoughts also.

Re: Small Mac-based site.

PostPosted: Sun Mar 22, 2020 1:34 pm
by Mike.Sheen
pricerc wrote:if there would be a case for a 'client only' installation for Jiwa that excludes all the SQL 'server' components? Obviously, this version would be unable to create databases (even a demo one), but that may have uses outside of this discussion: e.g. in a larger network, it may be desirable to have a client install rolled out in a group policy, and they may not want people to be able to create their own databases.


You're making my palms sweaty just thinking about what this would involve! - not just the application, but increased burden on support, documentation and the like in dealing with the introduced complexities. The idea has merit - but the business case would need to see fair bit of demand for this to be worthwhile. As much as I love a good challenge - and this would be a fun project - I'm sure our bean counters would frown upon putting resources put into that without solid evidence of demand.

We are looking to making Jiwa more multi-tenant friendly for RDS environments - the main downside there being a need for an internet connection for customers to access their Jiwa. But if that's not an issue, I envisage a scenario where one RDS machine could serve multiple tenants (Jiwa customers) in a partitioned, secure and seamless fashion.

Obviously, you'd need to have a number of users across all tenants before you reach the cost effective break-even point - depending on the hosting costs.

I wouldn't consider multi-tenanting the databases - they'd need their own. We certainly could achieve that with introducing a tenantId per table and implementing row level security - but that's a fair amount of work and a lot of interesting problems would need to be solved, so I'm not entertaining that aspect of multi-tenanting.