[rt-devel] RT 2.1.12-Win32 beta distribution

[Steve Radich]

Being I do the windows / iis world for a living the past 7+ years there's a
few things that aren't going to be accepted real well by the windows
community on this port.

I applaud the effort as I know just how much work it is to build a win32
solution / porting *nix -> win32. It's a LOT more work than most people
think.

However if I was looking at this from a windows user point of view..

The package needs to use IIS to be accepted IMHO, and the database should be
moved to Microsoft Access (the db is free, the UI isn't. It's good for
smaller stuff and could probably handle rt just fine). Alternatively MSDE
(Microsoft SQL Server, full blown, limited to a few simultaneous queries
before it starts slowing down so you don't use it for real tasks) could be
used. MSDE is also free (and is full featured Microsoft SQL Server, with
license restrictions). You'd need a licensed SQL Server (at least
development tools) to design the db, etc. but running it can be done free
embedded in your app.  Of course check the licensing yourself as I'm not
about to speak for Microsoft licensing terms..

The SMTP should be handled by the socket level commands to send the mail.
There's a lot of little issues to worry about when doing that -
authentication required / not required, smtp server name, etc. A lot of
scripts rely on the built in IIS SMTP server (CDONTS) but not everyone
installs that - ESPECIALLY if you are going to use Apache then you don't
want to require IIS to be installed for the SMTP service..

Perl is freely available on windows too, along with plenty of free libraries
to easily port rt to iis.

The current solution, although definitely respectable work (and a LOT of
work) I would expect a lot of windows folks to dislike and not appreciate.
If they are going to have to run Apache on their windows server then why not
just put up a linux box specifically for rt?  They have to learn to admin
mysql, etc. The average windows admin simply won't accept anything but
Microsoft databases, regardless of their ability to perform the job.

FYI: We thought about writing a public ASP based interface to our rt system
here, that can give customers status reports, etc.  That never got off the
ground as we couldn't build the business case for it. But we were looking at
simple asp scripts to insert new problems, check basic status of problem,
etc.  It's only about a days work to write those things in ASP on IIS (since
mysql odbc drivers are readily available).  That combined with a dedicated
linux box could easily be done by most any company.

Steve Radich - Colocation / Virtual Dedicated / Dedicated Servers
BitShop, Inc. - http://www.bitshop.com - $149/month colo special

-----Original Message-----
From: Neil H. [mailto:neil-list at hostmysite.com] 
Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2002 5:09 PM
To: rt-devel at lists.fsck.com
Subject: Re: [rt-devel] RT 2.1.12-Win32 beta distribution

Is this approved by Jesse, i.e. Is this legit?  How is the mail system
setup?

Thanks,

Neil

----- Original Message -----
From: "Autrijus Tang" <autrijus at autrijus.org>
To: <rt-devel at lists.fsck.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2002 10:27 AM
Subject: [rt-devel] RT 2.1.12-Win32 beta distribution




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