Server Administration Guide - Server Emulation (Version Emulation Settings)

Server Emulation

Do not confuse Server Emulation with Database Emulation. Server Emulation relates to the way that clients connect to the server. Database Emulation is intended to provide a smoother downgrade path following an upgrade. For more information, see Types of Emulation Supported by Geo SCADA Expert.

Geo SCADA Expert includes a Server Emulation feature that enables you to choose a version of Geo SCADA Expert for the server to emulate. This enables clients that are running different versions of Geo SCADA Expert to continue to be used for displaying and/or editing documents. The feature is intended to be used as a temporary measure while you upgrade your system from an older version of Geo SCADA Expert software. Once you have completed the upgrade and verified that it is successful, you then turn the Server Emulation off. However, you only do this once all of the clients that you intend using to display and/or edit documents (such as Mimics and Trends) have been upgraded to use the same version of Geo SCADA Expert software.

This is because database files are stored in a format that is version-specific (to accommodate the database items and properties that are supported by the particular version of Geo SCADA Expert software). Geo SCADA Expert clients can only display documents (such as Mimics and Trends) that have been created and saved using a version of Geo SCADA Expert up to, and including, the version that those clients are currently running. If your system is likely to have a mixture of old and new clients while it is being upgraded and you want all of those clients to continue to be able to access documents, use Server Emulation.

When using the Server Emulation feature, you set the server to emulate the version of Geo SCADA Expert software that is compatible with the oldest clients on your system (the clients that run the oldest version of Geo SCADA Expert). The feature enables the older clients to access documents that are created and edited on newer clients.

If a user attempts to display a document that has been saved in a version that is not supported by a client, the document display will show an 'unsupported file format' diagnostics message. This means that the document has been saved on a client that runs a later version of Geo SCADA Expert. (The client showing the diagnostics message runs an older version of Geo SCADA Expert than the client on which the document was saved). You can rectify this problem by using the Save All Documents feature (see Converting Unsupported Files into Supported Files).

In this section, we explain: