Product Information > JADE Thin Client Guide > Appendix B - Upgrading Software on Presentation Clients > Automatic Download Issues and Considerations

Automatic Download Issues and Considerations

When a 32-bit presentation client connects to a 64-bit application server, the application server upgrades the version of the presentation client but it does not change the 32-bit to 64-bit type of the presentation client, because:

Visual C++ runtimes are always upgraded (that is, the x64 version is installed) as part of the upgrade process.

If a presentation client running with 32‑bit binaries requires 64‑bit binaries, you can manually install them. Once installed, the presentation client will automatically upgrade, but with 64‑bit binaries. Alternatively, 32‑bit presentation clients can be upgraded to 64‑bit binaries, as follows.

When the UpgradeRuntimeTo64bit parameter is set to true, presentation clients that are running a 32‑bit version of jade.exe on a 64‑bit operating system cause a download and installation of 64‑bit binaries to that client (with the exceptions described later in this section). The default value of false indicates that 32‑bit version presentation clients continue to download 32‑bit binaries when required. Presentation clients that are running a 32‑bit version of jade.exe on a 32‑bit operating system continue to download 32‑bit binaries when required. If the client is not running a JADE version that is using Visual Studio 2005 runtime libraries, the JADE thin client download will not revert to a version that uses Visual Studio 2005 runtime libraries.

The UpgradeRuntimeTo64bit parameter applies only after the next thin client download has occurred, because any currently deployed jade.exe currently does not communicate the operating system type to the application server. To get 32‑bit clients to upgrade to 64‑bit binaries therefore requires two download and install processes: one to upgrade the jade.exe so that it will identify the operating system type to the application server, and the second to upgrade from 32‑bit to 64‑bit binaries.

The 32-bit version of presentation client binaries must be installed on the 64‑bit application server, in one of the following directory structures.

The 64-bit version of presentation client binaries must be installed on the 32‑bit application server, in one of the following directory structures.

The automatic download feature requires that the jade.exe and jaddinst executable program binaries and all libraries required by the jade.exe program running in thin client mode must be present in the binary directory on the application server. As the version information for these components is loaded when the application server is initiated, these modules therefore cannot be renamed on the application server.

The binary directory on the application server must have read access. The binary directory on each presentation client must allow read and write access to create the interlock files, create and update the values of the DownLoadVersion and PreDownLoadVersion parameters in the [JadeThinClient] section of the JADE initialization file on the presentation client, copy the older versions of the files from this directory, and allow the jaddinst program to copy files into the directory and overwrite the existing files.

Do not use the same binary directory to communicate with multiple application servers, as each application server may attempt to alternately upgrade the files in turn.

If the JADE initialization file on the presentation client is read-only, the download version cannot be updated. As a result, each time the presentation client initiates the application and the application server and presentation client download versions are different, they go through a file comparison phase that is not necessary, consuming more resources, and causing a longer initiation time.

When the JADE thin client downloads any files with an .ocx name type, an attempt is made to register these files to the Windows operating system. This registration process can be performed only under administration mode. The JADE thin client installer detects that an OCX file has to be installed and attempts to re‑run itself in administration mode so that the OCX file can be registered with the Windows operating system. If the installer can be run in administration mode, the files downloaded are installed as normal and any OCX files are registered. If the client environment does not permit the operation of administration mode, the attempted re‑initiation fails and the download installation continues in non‑administration mode. This results in the OCX registration process failing and being reported to the user. This is a non‑fatal error, and use of the OCX will require manual intervention from an administrative user.