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So, what about alternatives to Windows, is the Apple Macintosh or Linux a viable alternative for the application? With Linux now residing in many server rooms could it be used for the database server? Macintosh Great Plains have had a long history with Apple which I will not go into here, however it is worth noting Dynamics has been available on Macintosh until version 5.0. From release of Dynamics 5.5. and later the Macintosh has been dropped as a supported platform. This should not prevent a suitably configured Mac utilizing an Intel Card or a soft windows emulator from running the Windows version of Dynamics. This techy has not tried it in this configuration and is unable to confirm this for the Mac supporters, nor would I expect Great Plains to support Dynamics if configured like this. Linux Linux is not a supported platform for either the client desktop or the database server nor does this techy consider it will ever be. However, in spite of this a dedicated crew did try using the Btrieve database on a Linux server with interesting results. Using Red Hat 7.0 the Pervasive.SQL 2000i Linux Edition engine was installed and a samba shared created. Into this share we copied a clients Btrieve data files. After working through issues of network rights and security Dynamics was eventually able to launch and a location translation effected. Dynamics behaved and ran without fault, even the Scalable SQL engine was operational. Using the DDF generator the data definition files were created in the shared Company folder, with the Pervasive Control Centre from the Windows client PC the databases were named and SQL databases created. This enabled an ODBC data source to be created from the client to access data using Excel from the SQL engine. Performance was good and the lack of complications (except the sorting out of the security by the inexperienced) is a credit to both Pervasive's software and the Linux platform. As a client platform Linux could be utilised using windows emulators Wine or VMware , however neither have been tried nor are either of these options supported. |
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Both Macintosh and Linux are not
supported
by Great Plains. If you were to attempt to use Dynamics or eEnterprise on
either of these platforms do not expect any official support, you would be on
your own.
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