Running Alpha5 V10 Developer & Runtime on same PC

[markG]

Background
I run a copy of Alpha Five V10 Developer on my PC and would like to setup a 2nd ID and install
Alpha Five V10 Runtime so I can make my PC available to our users when they need an extra work
station during peak usage time.

Question
Is it possible to successfully install and run both Alpha Five V10 Developer and
Alpha Five V10 Runtime on the same PC under separate user IDs?

[Al Buchholz]

Yes.

In fact you can run both versions under the same user id.

Make sure you install to different directories for each version.

Then to make sure the proper version is run, use the Alpha make a shortcut option from the version you want to run.

[markG]

Hi Al - Thanks for your response!

I will give this a shot and let you know how it works out. I'm going to setup a 2nd ID because I do not want our users
to have access to my desktop where I have a bunch of other stuff that would just get in their way.

Thanks again ... Mark

[MoGrace]

Hi Mark,
Welcome to the board. Sarasota is my most favorite place - I used to live on Siesta Key and loved it there. But then my parents moved and I've had no more reason to visit.

[DaveM]

Was in Sarasota a few days ago for a birthday. Live just up the road in Hudson.

[markG]

Hi Al -

I successfully installed a copy of Alpha5 Runtime on my PC in a 2nd ID that I setup. The "Hint" you gave me about Alpha5 building a shortcut was key to helping me figure out a problem I ran into.

When I logged back into my Developer ID it seemed like I lost my Developer capabilities, I could not run the Designer! My shortcut target was just a file pathname to the "J:\MyDatabaseStuff.adb" file. I looked at how Alpha5 builds a shortcut and modified mine as such. I changed it to explicitly run the Developer software and things got back to normal ...

Target "C:\Program Files\a5V10\alpha5.exe" "J:\MyDatabaseStuff.adb"

I seems like by default if you have both Developer and Runtime installed on your PC it will choose Runtime.

Anyway, thanks again for your help ... Mark

[markG]

Happy Belated Birthday Hudson!

[markG]

I live off Clark Road and Siesta Key is about 10 minutes from there.

[Al Buchholz]

Mark

Glad it's working.

The default application is the last one installed.

You can override that in Windows.

Better to explicitly set it in the shortcut.

[markG]

I did not know that the default application is the last one installed, but that makes sense base on my experience.

Yes, I can use the shortcuts.

Thanks again Al ... Mark

[Al Buchholz]

I did not know that the default application is the last one installed, but that makes sense base on my experience.

Yes, I can use the shortcuts.

Thanks again Al ... Mark

From windows explorer, right click any .adb file - at the bottom of the submenu is properties - general tab - button to change the opens with: - shows you the default app to open a file.

While you can reset it to any Alpha version that is appropriate, I always use the Alpha generated shortcut to eliminate subtle issues while running Alpha - ie it's a best practice to use the generated shortcut.

[MoGrace]

Under the runtime program directory, you can also copy & rename or just rename the alpha5.exe to alpha5RT.exe. It might also help when looking at the properties in the shortcut which version you are running.

[markG]

Thanks for all the help and great tips everyone, case closed!

[DaveM]

Alpha overwrites the desktop shortcut on each install and so looks like it rerplaced the last install. whatever the first one rename to show RT or DEV so the next install will not overwrite it.
Something alpha should have remedied a long time ago to avoid confusion.