Re: Updating a VB6 across the Internet



Can you host the update download on an HTTP? If so, then you can dump the
ocx and just use a buncha wininet APIs to download via HTTP instead of
FTP... InternetOpen, InternetConnect, HttpOpenRequest, InternetOpenUrl,
InternetReadFile, InternetCloseHandle.

It's a bit of code and I don't have any "ready to post" code for it on this
PC, but you should be able to find some code samples with a Google of the
internets and groups (http://groups.google.com).

Obviously, you may still have client firewall issues depending on how they
have their firewalls set up. But doing it as an HTTP file download may make
it easier (i.e., may only need to set http://www.yoursite.com/updatefiles/
as an exception or whatnot).




<bbuntain@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:bc5ed89e-972e-43fa-94a5-fd870543b8df@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I have a Visual Basic 6.0 application that is used by a few hundred
clients, most of them large corporations. We ship an update every
quarter. To simplify the distribution of updates a couple of years ago
I wrote an update function into the program using FTP calls. It works
for some of our users, but not others. I have tried both msinet.ocx
and wininet.dll. Neither is consistently satisfactory. There are two
problems:

1. Many corporate firewalls do not allow users to use FTP. In such
cases I have to coach the IT people on setting up an exception that
allows our program to use it. Since there is so much variation in
firewalls, this is problematic.

2. I believe there is an intermittent error in at least some versions
of wininet.dll which causes our users to get errors even when their
firewalls are configured to allow FTP or they have successfully used
FTP in other scenarios.

Before trying to rewrite this function and figure out a way to
distribute it to our users, I would like to hear from someone who
might point me to a more reliable electronic distribution method. I
realize there is no definite answer to this question, but I am hoping
to get some feedback that would lead me to profitable lines of
investigation.

Thanks.

.



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