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Cradle from 3SL, the complete Model Based Systems Engineering Toolsuite, specialising in requirements management, requirements capture, model based systems engineering and for systems engineering software, support and consultancy, the logical choice: Cradle from 3SL.

December 2008 [Cradle 5.7]

Citrix XenApp

Many Cradle customers have distributed projects with engineers working at multiple sites. For such projects, there is always the issue of how engineers at the remote sites are to link to the Cradle system at the main site. There are essentially two options:

  • The remote users run Cradle clients locally (to them) and these clients link over the Internet (typically a VPN connection) to the Cradle Database Server (CDS) running at the main site
  • The remote users run Cradle clients remotely (to them) at the main site (which link to the local, to them, CDS) and the UIs of these Cradle clients (and other applications) are displayed across the Internet (typically over a VPN connection again) to the remote user’s local desktop

That is, either:

  • The Cradle messages travel across the Internet
  • The Cradle client UIs travel across the Internet

There are several technologies that allow UIs to be shown across an Internet connection, including:

  • Remote Desktop
  • X
  • VNC
  • Citrix

Technologies from Citrix are very popular. Their main technology has historically been called Presentation Manager. Citrix has recently released XenApp and 3SL has been asked if we support it.

Citrix XenApp is a Windows application delivery system that manages applications in the data centre and delivers them as an on-demand service to users anywhere using any device. Citrix say: "XenApp 5 for Windows Server 2003 is based on the Presentation Server 4.5 code base and installation. With the exception of optional or updated plugins or agents, there are no installation process or requirement to deploy any new binaries on each member server."

3SL confirms that Cradle fully supports XenApp. XenApp is, in effect, an upgrade to their Presentation Manager. Indeed, some parts of the XenApp installer still refer to Presentation Manager 4.5.

3SL asks users or Windows Server 2008 to note that this must be cleanly re-installed as Citrix do not offer an upgrade path for this operating system.

For further information about XenApp, please see:

http://www.citrix.com/english/ps2/products/product.asp?contentid=186