FAQ's for the General Community

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Client User Interface

Desktop Application / Rich Client

Q: Is the openPETRA Client Windows-only?

The Client is not strictly Windows-only as it is done using the .NET platform and .NET WinForms. An open source, cross-platform implementation exists which supports both (Mono). Mono supports e.g. Mac OS X and Linux.

The openPETRA Client does not rely on anything that would make it Windows-bound, e.g. Win32 API calls. However, we know that there are some shortcomings in the implementation of Mono WinForms on other operating systems. The openPETRA Client starts up on either of the operating systems mentioned, things just doesn't look that good when it comes to more elaborate forms. This isn't a fault of openPETRA, it is due to some shortcomings of the mono implementation of .NET WinForms. As the mono WinForms implementation matures, things might improve in this arena. Also, openPETRA's user interface is generated and not hand-painted, therefore our WinForms Generator could help in overcoming some of mono WinForms' shortcomings by emitting special source code for platforms where mono WinForms is used for running the openPETRA Client, if needed.

We test and support the openPETRA Client officially only on Windows. The reason for that is that we ourselves only need it on Windows and we are concentrating our efforts on what we need. That said, if somebody puts some work into it, it should work on other operating systems as well.


Web Frontend

Q: Is there a 'web client' for openPETRA?

openPETRA can have a web frontend in addition to its desktop application user interface. A demo of some web forms that were made with and for openPETRA can be found here: http://demo.openpetra.org:8009/ (esp. the last two links on that page).

For OM's implementation of openPETRA there are no plans to do larger parts or even the whole of openPETRA as a web application. However, there is nothing that would prevent somebody from doing just that if time and energy is put towards it. OM just won't do it as our focus is a desktop application (see also this discussion: Rich desktop application vs. rich web interface).

Petra Server cannot be found/reached

If this message appears on attenting to log in please check your server.log. You can find it on "E:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\OpenPetra.org\tmp30. Scroll down to the end of the file and check f in the following message appears:

 Exception occured while establishing a connection to Database Server. DB Type: SQLite
 Possible cause: System.Data.SQLite.SQLiteException: File opened that is not a database file file is encrypted or is not a
 database

In order to solve the problem delete the indicated file in "E:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\OpenPetra.org\db30\petra.db". Please be aware that by doing so all the data that have been entered before will then be deleted.

More questions?

Just ask a question in this [Forum].

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FAQ's for Developers