Like a previous poster, we are upgrading here from version 5 to version 8 (5.7.8 to 8.0.x). At the same time, we are moving to new server hardware, rewriting a lot of our existing jobs, and leaving a bunch of old ones behind.

Questions:
1. Can the Version 8 client connect to the Version 5 server? I got an exception one time (about an object not existing or not being defined or something) and a time-out the next. If this is not possible, I'll just leave the version 5 client on my old 32-bit laptop for connecting to the old server, and continue moving forward with the version 8 client on my new, 64-bit laptop, to connect to the new servers.

I would assume that one can't install both client versions on the same machine?

2. Is it possible to export/import a subset of the jobs? I seem to recall that it is.

3. Is it feasible to export jobs, modify them using a text editor, and then import them? It's kind of awkward to do scan for typos and perform diffs between jobs using the GUI.

Thanks,

Rebeccah

Hi Rebeccah,

1. No, you can't use the client v8 on a server v5. There are lot's of changes behind the scenes so the client and server needs to be the same version. Also there can only be one server on a machine and I think you can have multiple clients on one machine, but install them in seperate folders.
   
2. In the current version you can, in version v5 I don't know excactly. In the backup.zip are all the settings of the server. If you're handy with XML, you can alter the files in there, but I would not recommend that.
   
3. Every version can have some changes in the tasks/jobs. The export of all these settings are in the XML files in the settings folder of the server. Comparing XML files from different versions is not recommended, you can have a lot of differences. You should be very carefull if you alter the XML files in a text editor. You have to stop the server, alter them and start it again. As in point 2, I would not recommend altering the XML files.
   

To alter jobs/task in a faster way, you can use the API and to it programmaticly in the latter versions of Visualcron.

Regards,
Erik

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Thanks, Erik.
I'll have to take a look at the XML files again. A nice-to-have would be a simple text export that would show all of the user-configured choices, but leave out the behind-the-scenes details and xml tags, that would just be for the purpose of proofreading. This is as much (or more) for comparing DEVELOPMENT-VALIDATION-PRODUCTION versions of a job as for comparing pre-move vs post-move.

Rebeccah