Any way which has a worse cost/benefit ratio is a wrong way, or perhaps to be politically correct, "less-right way".


>"The Right Way"
>Does it mean other ways are wrong?
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>>If you have VFP apps that you want to save and maintain in VFP and at the same time are looking for a way forward using thin-client solutions then this is your lucky day. TSPlus (http://www.terminalserviceplus.com/) is your VFP apps new best friend. TSPlus allows you to "publish" your VFP apps (in fact, any app) to your users and make them accessible via any browser or Java enabled device including Windows desktops, laptops, tablets, iPads, iPhones, and Android devices.
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>>How? TSPlus allows your users to use a browser to log into your server, be offered one or more applications to run as you choose, and they run either inside a browser tab or outside the browser if you have Java installed.
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>>Whats the catch? No catch.
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>>CALS? No CALs because this is not Remote Desktop but instead your apps are accessed via a web-server, either TSPlus' internal/built-in web-server or via IIS or Apache or some other. Essentially TSPlus runs your app like a website/service. Neither TSE nor the Terminal Services role nor the Terminal Services Licensing role are run or even installed on the server. TSPlus does not use anything of the Windows Terminal Services model/software.
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>>What do I need to change in my app? Nothing. Zero. If your app is already built for multi-user access then you just run it as is - no change. Not 1 line.
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>>Printing? TSPlus redirects to users local printer.
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>>Opening Documents? TSPlus can redirects to local application for opening documents like PDF, DOC, XLS. No MS Office on the server needed.
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>>How hard is it to setup? I did a test and in less than 1 hour from start to finish I had a VFP app (and some other apps written in WinDev) up and running.
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>>Scalability? Handles load balancing via a server farm if you need it. From 1 server to many - built in management.
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>>Costs? There are 2 aspects to consider: (1) what functionality you want to offer your users, and (2) how many concurrent users you want to handle. For example, you might want to offer remote printing (that's an additional feature) or web-based access (that's an extra feature, or mobile access (that's an extra feature). Or you might only need 3 users or 10 or 100 or unlimited. But here's the thing - for all features of TSPlus and for unlimited number of users ... US$1175. Once off.
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>>Who are these guys? Their website has some "About Us" stuff but apparently they have been around since 1996 - http://www.tsplus.net/aboutus.php - this page also has lots of info and screenshots.
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>>Here is some more detail from my initial tests and experiments:
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>>I had a clean Windows 2008 R2 (64 bit) server handy for testing. I installed the TSPlus on it and this went through very simple and straight forward.
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>>Installation and Setup:
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>>Installation is simple - just click "next" and "ok" and it is done. Nothing complicated here. The TSPlus administrator front-end is quite straight forward. Although there are quite a few options they are logically arranged into 6 categories; (1) Server settings (options for the back-end server), (2) Applications (options for which applications you want to expose to your users and for setting which users can access what), (3) Web settings (options for setting up the TSPlus built-in web server), (4) Security (read this as it is important to understand), (5) Gateway (options for managing a farm of servers for high user loads, and (6) Licensing options. I won’t go into each option as spending just 1 hour looking through them is quite enough to understand the basic idea and purpose of each option.
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>>TSPlus web server vs. IIS or Apache:
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>>TSPlus comes with its own web server (i.e. like IIS) which will install by default and hence handle web traffic but you can also use your own web server or IIS which comes with Windows. What you choose depends on what your server is doing; if it will be dedicated to just TSPlus then I guess let TSPlus handle everything. If you need to share the server with websites or other HTTP(S) services then you will need to decide how to handle that. I choose to let TSPlus use its own web server and (Tip 1) make sure IIS is turned OFF in order for the TSPlus to be able to handle the HTTP requests. If IIS is on then TSPlus will not work since IIS is catching all HTTP requests and not TSPlus. I am not sure how to use IIS instead of the TSPlus web server; you have to do something with changing the default port to 81 and then some sort of port forwarding but I did not experiment with this yet.
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>>Publishing Apps:
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>>Setting up which applications you wish to "publish" to users is simple; you just select the EXE files, set the folder locations for running them, and give them a name for the user to see. That is simple enough. Obviously the EXE files, i.e. your application, must handle being loaded by multiple users so that if your app creates/uses files then just keep in mind that multiple users will be loading the same app and thus accessing the same files. However, each user will be running in their own memory space similar to Remote Desktop and hence they all get their own "C:\users\login_name" sub-folder and so forth.
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>>Users:
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>>Basically you set up users on your server. You create them as normal using the Windows Management Interface for Users and Groups. Each user has a username, password, etc. You can then, via the TSPlus Administrator interface, choose which applications each user can access. Different users can be given access to different applications. Or you can choose to bulk-set one or more applications for all users by default.
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>>Security:
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>>Read the security help as that is important. The easiest security techniques are (1) tell TSPlus to only allows users who are added to the Remote Desktops Group, and (2) users must always login using username + password.
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>>In addition, you can create a TSPlus client application (TSPlus does this for you) and then you can say only allow users who are accessing via this Client Application. Furthermore, you can prevent users from using Remote Desktop clients to further narrow the number of users who can access the server.
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>>Lastly you can choose to hide all server drives. This is very important if your application allows users to save documents because the Save As dialog will expose all local drives. By hiding all drives (or those drives that you want to keep private) you can prevent users from seeing drives they shouldn't see/access.
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>>Setting up the default page for the web server:
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>>You have to setup the "landing" page for your web server. The landing page is the page your users will navigate to with their browser and will ask for login details etc. This is done under tab 3 “Web” and using option Webmaster Toolkit. The dialog basically allows you to define a simple landing page for your server; this includes a title, some colours, some logos, a footer. You can also choose the wording, i.e. translations for your preferred language, for the various buttons and wording on the page. You can choose which types of devices can access your apps (desktop, iPad, etc.). It also allows you to define how your applications will appear to the user. There are several options such as a defined width/height or "seamless" which means within the browser window itself, colour depth, etc. You can choose whether HTML5, Java, or Windows access modes can be offered to your user for loading your application. I tried seamless and HTML5 and that works all inside a browser tab. I guess one needs to experiment with these options to find what works best for one's purpose.
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>>Accessing Published Apps:
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>>OK, so here it gets interesting. You open a browser (I used FireFox) and you point it to your server. The landing page you "designed" above gets displayed. If you specified that a username+password must be entered then these are requested on the landing page. You choose how to login i.e. HTML5, Java, or Windows, and click Login. What happens next depends on a user interface setting you chose under the TSPlus Admin application. This determines how the application(s) you want to offer your users is presented. If you only offered one application then that application just loads – simple. If you offered multiple applications to your users then one option is a blank desktop with icons for each application you offer. Another option is a type of "taskbar" across the top or down the right side with buttons for each application. Another option is called the TSPlus floating bar which is a "toast" type float out/in mini-window with a button for each application you published for that user. Whatever method you use is a personal choice. The user clicks the button for the desired application and the application loads. In my case the application loaded inside the browser tab since I used HTML5 which means in the browser.
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>>How does it look/feel:
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>>My apps loaded inside the browser tab (HTML5 mode) and they look and feel exactly like they do when run locally except inside my browser. If you choose to run the application in "Windows" mode then your app will run outside of the browser and will appear on the users taskbar. However, this requires Java to be installed on the users machine. If a client does not want to install Java then you can just run your app using HTML5 mode and then it runs inside the browser itself. The application appears with its title bar, min/max buttons, etc. Just as when run normally locally.
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>>You will also want to make sure Windows Aero Theme mode is ON for ALL users otherwise your apps are going to inherit the Windows 2000 look and feel - ugh! This is done under Group Policy Manager and is not a TSPlus related setting.
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>>Performance:
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>>Of course there is a lag since what is happening is that the screen updates are being pumped from the server to the user and mouse+keyboard action is being pumped from the user to the server - so bandwidth is the bottleneck. If your server has sufficient bandwidth and the user has sufficient bandwidth then this lag will become small and possibly not even really noticeable. It also depends on how much screen activity your application creates – the more visually active your application is the more information that needs to be sent to the user. Otherwise, everything works exactly as if you were running the app locally. Obviously the servers resources are now going to be split amongst all the users that load your application(s). This means RAM and disk access will be shared. Therefore I think it is imperative to use a 64 bit version of Windows so the OS can access RAM above the 3GB limit, then add in lots of RAM e.g. 8Gb minimum, and then try and go for a fast hard disk or even a solid state drive.
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>>I have not tested TSPlus with multiple users but I assume that since they have been around since 1996 that this works OK. I think multiple user access is going to be mainly dependent on the hardware capabilities and your bandwidth.
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>>Windows Licensing and CALS:
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>>Apparently you do NOT need any Windows CALS and this is because it is all running as a website / web server which is not number of users dependent.
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>>Printing:
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>>I have not tested this but TSPlus say printing and opening of external documents (e.g. XLS, DOC, PDF) all get re-directed to the end-users machine so the printing occurs locally and the document is opened on the client computer. I did not test this yet.
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>>Conclusion:
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>>Looks like a very interesting product and definitely worth experimenting with. Will post more feedback if I find anything worth saying.