Welcome back!

In software development, a desktop application may still contain bugs. When all bugs captured, the aplication is ready to deploy on client side. Sometimes after deployment and running live, user may find a bug in the software. So, as member of development team, you should identify the bug and fix it immediately because system has entered production phase.

When software patch / update ready, you have to deploy it to client sides. If clients reside on a place, it shouldn’t a matter. But what happen if you have several clients and they all spread around the city ? Will you travel around to each client and update the software to the latest release version just like you did when installing it ? Yes, off course because you are the programmer aren’t you? But is there any smart way to do this without having to visit each client?

The answer is to give your application a smart Auto Update feature. In this way, every client application will always check to server if new update available, download and patch it automatically on the client computer. So, you as the programmer only need to tell the server for new update and put it on server or any place accessible for your client application. For this purpose, I will utilize the software version release on VB6 to do the job.

There are 2 ways of auto updating client application which I usually use for my client server project, which I called Version Triggered Update and Admin Triggered Update.

1. Version Triggered Update

For this type, auto update will occur if the version of new update is higher than the client version. The flow is :

• Put update on server or any place accessible by client application.
• Notify server for new update.
• Client application will check to server if there is new update and check server’s version against it’s version.
• If server’s version is higher than client, download update to local computer.
• Close client application and apply new update.
• Restart client application and now it’s updated !

2. Admin Triggered Update

This type will uilize Admin function in releasing new update. Update can be managed by the Admin and not depends on the software version. This is very flexible way to update client application since Admin has authority to allow update or not. I used this way in my client server application because it allow me to release update anytime bugs found without concern about version.

The procedure :

• Put update on server or any place accessible by client application.
• Admin release new update to server with some Update ID.
• Client application will check to server if there is new update and check server’s Update ID against it’s own.
• If server’s Update ID is higher than client, download update to local computer.
• Close client application and apply new update.
• Restart client application and now it’s updated !

We have discussed method and procedure to do auto update client application. On the next part, we will dive deeply to the core programming using VB6 and SQL Server.