Thin Clients and Software Compatibility

Most Windows software sold today is compatible with thin clients. If a software package is identified as being Windows 2000 ready, then it is almost certainly a product that will run on a thin client system. In fact, Microsoft's decision to include thin client support into the standard Windows 2000 Server has increased the urgency for all of the software manufacturers to produce a product that runs on thin clients. But until you get software specifically designed for them, how can you tell if your current software package will work with the thin client architecture? There are several different ways, and in this article we take a look at a few of them.

Check with the software vendor

This sounds basic, and it is, but it is often overlooked. Thin clients are very new (especially in the industrial world), and the problem most often encountered is that the people that are on the technical support lines are unfamiliar with them. It may therefore be necessary to talk with someone other than tech support. In that case, start with your salesman and go from there. It is almost guaranteed that in all of the large software houses, there is someone who has tried their product on a thin client and has the information that you need. It may just take a little while to discover who that is.

The main issue that the software company will have to deal with is the issue of licensing. In fact, we know of companies who have a product that works very well with thin clients, but they are holding off until they can get a licensing structure in place. The problem for them is that their current licensing scheme will probably not work for thin clients. We have even run software that requires a hardware key attached to the parallel port. Each instance that is started on the server verifies that the key is present and then starts and runs normally.

Until all of the manufactures bring support for thin client licensing into their product, they will probably want it handled as if the software was being run on distributed PCs, and therefore have the customer buy one license for each thin client. You still only need to install the software once, but at least this way the manufacturer will be happy and more inclined to help you out when you have technical questions.

Make thin client support a condition of the sale

We have a customer that actually wrote into the site-license for the software that the vendor had to support their product running on thin clients. At the point of the sale, the vendor didn't see any problem, and so once the contract was finalized the software company was ready to add thin clients to its list of supported hardware.

Try the software

While this won't address the issue of support from the manufacturer, it may make you feel comfortable enough with the software's operation that you can tell that there won't be any problems. Many simple programs fall under this category. Surprisingly, many of the applications that we see have no problems at all are from several years back. This is because people wrote much simpler code then, and many times the program consisted of a single '.exe' file that you could just copy to a directory and run.

For more complex software, there are some behavioral characteristics that you want to check, and the more that you know about the software product the easier it will be to answer these questions. Although each thin client session of the software could be run under a different user (and so would use different user configurations), remember that all of the instances of the software will be running on the same machine. To help determine the applications compatibility with thin clients, find out the following things:

• How does the program save its configuration? If it uses a single specifically named configuration file, or saves data in the system area of the Windows registry, then it will possibly have problems.
• How do multiple instances of the program communicate? Some inter-task communication relies on the IP address of the machine that is hosting the task, and in that case an alternate method may have to be used. All applications run on the same machine (the server) so they all have the same IP address.
• Is it bit-mapped graphics intensive? The way that a thin client is able to perform such rapid screen updates is that it only transfers the portion of the screen that has changed. If the application is constantly changing large bit-mapped images, then the graphics performance will suffer.
• How does the program handle messages (error, alarm, etc.)? If the program sends messages to an independent logging program, then the session that sent the message may not be identified in the log. All of the messages will probably get through, but it may not be possible to identify which client session sent which message.
• How does it specify printers? Many of the older DOS based programs specify these devices by their port name (like 'lpt1'), and it may be difficult to get the printout to go to a printer local to the thin client. If the program uses Windows printer conventions, then it is easy to map the printers to the correct thin client.
• Does the program rely on extensive use of a very large color palette? Thin clients are limited in the number of colors that they can reproduce - this is done to allow the screens to update quickly. However, even the oldest versions of thin client software handle 256 colors, so this is usually not a problem.

We have run almost all of the current industry specific software tools, and have found that most software is compatible with thin clients. Everything can be made to work, the question is how much trouble will it be. Do some investigation and look for the vendors to come out with products designed with thin clients in mind. This is happening at a rapidly accelerating pace, and ACP is helping many vendors make sure that their products are ready for thin clients.

For more information on ACP Industrial Thin Client computers, please visit our web site at http://www.thinmanager.com

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