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Switching between Mac host and Windows in Parallels

[This topic is migrated from our old forums. The original author name has been removed]

Is there a way to specify where DBVis will look for its config files? I'm running Mac OS X 10.6.1 (Snow Leopard) as well as running XP via Parallels VM. If I'm working on a project where I'm using my Mac primarily, I'll run DBVis on the Mac itself, otherwise if I'm running Windows within the Parallels VM environment, I'd like to be able to run DBVis within that Windows environment. The problem is that since Parallels sets up the Windows user to inherit the home directory from the Mac host OS (or at least that's how it's set up on my machine), DBVis running on Mac and DBVis running in Windows are sharing the same set of config files. As a result, pointers to JDBC drivers, etc., in one environment don't work in the other, as the paths are not the same. I believe that setting up a separate set of config files for each environment would resolve this. Or is there a better way? Thanks in advance. ..Russ
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[This reply is migrated from our old forums.]

Re: Switching between Mac host and Windows in Parallels
Russ, Normally the directories in respective environment is referred with different drive letters so that XP running in Parallels would cause DbVis to save the user preferences under: C:\Documents and Settings\\.dbvis While the reference to the OS X settings would be accessed as (drive letter is just an example): Z:/Users//.dbvis We're running Parallels for testing purposes and I've not seen the scenario whereas DbVisualizer use the same path for Windows settings and OS X. Parallels have several options to control how file systems shouldl be mounted and I have probably overlooked some. DbVisualizer use the "user.home" Java property to determine where the settings should be saved. What is the value of it when you run DbVisualizer in OS X compared with running in XP? You find this in the Help->About window and the "System Settings" tab. To force an alternative location for the user settings directory, please check the following which explains how to do this: http://www.minq.se/products/dbvis/doc/faq/faq.jsp#4.6 Regards Roger
[This reply is migrated from our old forums. The original author name has been removed]

Re: Switching between Mac host and Windows in Parallels
Hello Roger, The user.home value in OS X is "/Users/". The user.home value in Windows running under Parallels is "\\.psf\Home" which maps to the OS X home directory above. Parallels has a "Shared Folders" option which allows the guest Windows OS to see and use the host OS X folders. One of the choices is "Home Folder" which causes the user's home directories to be the same on both OSes. Handy in some cases, not so much in others! :-) I'll try the approach you pointed to for isolating the settings files. (Of course, like any typical user, what I *really* want is for DBVis to anticipate exactly which settings I want to isolate and which I want to share, so that I don't have to duplicate my list of connections, etc. Not asking too much for DBVis to read my mind, is it?!? ;-) Thanks for your prompt reply! ..Russ
[This reply is migrated from our old forums. The original author name has been removed]

Re: Switching between Mac host and Windows in Parallels
On a related note....is there some way to have dbvis.xml not include system-specific path information that breaks Windows <-> Linux/Mac compatibility? My dev team would like to share our DB Visualizer configuration. Us Windows' devs have done so for awhile, but now we've got a couple guys on Linux/Mac and they can't use the same dbvis.xml. For example, the /Drivers/Driver/Locations/Location/Path value looks like "C:\dbvisualizer\jdbc\mysql\mysql.jar". Obviously this is only valid on Windows systems. It'd be nice if these paths were relative to the installation directory. On the dbvis.xml sharing note, it'd be nice if the wasn't included since that varies on each user's computer. Thanks, Martin Edited by: Martin Saxer on Nov 20, 2009 12:27 AM
[This reply is migrated from our old forums.]

Re: Switching between Mac host and Windows in Parallels
Martin, Currently DbVisualizer store absolute paths in the settings file. I will add you request as a feature enhancement request. Note also that in the next feature version we have extended the File->Export/Import Settings feature to also handle driver files. Regards Roger
[This reply is migrated from our old forums. The original author name has been removed]

Re: Switching between Mac host and Windows in Parallels
Great! Thanks Roger.
[This reply is migrated from our old forums.]

Re: Switching between Mac host and Windows in Parallels
Russ, In the new 7.1 version you can enable so that paths are relative when exporting all settings (File->Export Settings). Regards Roger
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