On the Mac OS X version of BPVA, I’ve noticed that when I launch the application as a non-administrative user the BPVA app only lists the administrator’s workspace in the drop-down list, not the workspace(s) used by the user in question.
On OS X an application can only be installed (in the default Applications folder) by an administrator user. I did so and tested the app from that user with no problems. However when I logged in as a non-administrator user (a good practice on OS X) when prompted for a workspace it would only list the one created by the administrator (as well as the default one within the BPVA directory). As I had previously created a workspace for the non-admin user I would expect that one to be listed. Changing it manually to the non-admin workspace, continuining with the app load, then exiting and repeating the launch resulted in the same problem.
(For that matter, it would be a serious security breach if a non-admin user was able to use the administrator’s workspace!)
I know there is something slightly weird about how the BPVA application is installed (most Mac apps allow you to enter your administrator credentials to allow the install to continue; the BPVA installer required me to actually log on as the administrator to launch the installer correctly)… maybe the preferences are being stored incorrectly?
I’m afraid not. I suspect that Mac support is fairly nominal with this product team… as in they’ll make sure the product works in a generic sense but not in a Mac sense.
Maybe in one of those future mythical service packs they’ll deal with this… along with a lot of the other requests I’ve made. :?
Thanks for your posts. Do you have the write permission to the VP installation folder? If you do not have the write permission, your workspace settings will not be stored. If there are any further inquiries, please do not hesitate to ask.
This is the default permission to the VP installation folder. As you can see the only user with write permission to this directory is “admin”, the account used to install the application. What should the correct permissions be?
mac4025:~ gfloro$ ls -l /Applications/BP\ Visual\ ARCHITECT\ 2.2/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 3 admin admin 102 Mar 5 08:24 Business Process Visual ARCHITECT 2.2 Uninstaller.app
drwxr-xr-x 8 admin admin 272 Mar 5 08:23 UserLanguage
drwxr-xr-x 12 admin admin 408 Apr 3 12:29 bin
drwxr-xr-x 5 admin admin 170 Mar 5 08:24 bundled
drwxr-xr-x 14 admin admin 476 Mar 5 08:23 lib
drwxr-xr-x 8 admin admin 272 Mar 5 08:24 ormlib
drwxr-xr-x 28 admin admin 952 Mar 5 08:25 resources
drwxr-xr-x 14 admin admin 476 Mar 5 08:24 scripts
drwxr-xr-x 6 admin admin 204 Mar 5 08:23 shapes
drwxr-xr-x 2 admin admin 68 Feb 6 12:07 uninstaller
drwxr-xr-x 4 admin admin 136 Mar 5 08:24 updatesynchronizer
What file is used to store the path to the users workspace?
Thanks for replying. It seems that you really have no write permission on the VP installation folder, you need to ask the user “admin” to release permission to you.
If you have any further inquiries, please feel free to contact me again.
I already knew I didn’t have write permission to the installation directory. I asked two questions:
what should the permissions be? Do users need write permission to EVERY directory under the installation folder, or only to a few specific directories?
What file[s] need to be updated to store the user workspace information?
Here is a third question while I am at it. Why isn’t this information stored in ~/Users/user_name/Library/Preference/ or at least in the user’s home directory instead of the installation directory?
Thanks for your post and I’m sorry that I misunderstood your previous reply.
For remember the workspace settings, there is not need to have write permission to every folders under the VP installation directory, only “bin” and “resources” folders are required to store the workspace data/settings.
Below is a list of the files to be updated to store the application data (all are inside the VP installation directory):
bin.vpworkspaceinfo
bin\vp.log
bin\vpupdate.log
bin\floatinglicense.config (if using floating license)
The current design (storing workspace data in the VP installation directory) is to provide flexibility for user to move the entire installation directory without any loss in data/settings.
In fact, we will support to store the application data in the user’s home directory in the future (if they cannot be stored in the VP installation directory, it will be stored in the user’s home directory instead) . If there is any news about this issue, I’ll inform you immediately.
If you have any inquiries, please feel free to ask.
