I have developed a comprehensive C/S application that is used by the clients in a LAN, at various branch offices as well as by travelling salespersons.  The ElevateDB database resides on a server at a single location and remote access is provided by opening a port in the firewall so remote users have access to the database.  This works very well.  I have now been asked to provide spelling checking throughout the application for the textual fields/memos.

I have purchased the Addictive-Software spell checking product as it appears to have the longest and strongest support.  If you are familiar with the Addictive product, it utilizes a common shared Dictionary file as well as individual custom dictionary files that can be merged.  Since the product appears to depend on direct file access to the Dictionaries I conclude that there is no way other than through replication of the Dictionaries between the local and remote users upon application start-up which will dramatically hinder the performance of the application until the replication completes.

If any of you have experience with the Addictive product when used in a C/S application, I would really appreciate hearing from you in case there is a more elegant approach.  Once I come up with an acceptable solution, I will share my approach in this General forum or perhaps on the 3rd-party forum if the solution gets too component specific.

Feel free to contact me directly as well.

Thanks,
... Norm

The big problem with shared dictionaries is always the users. They add
words as right, which are not right.

I think I'd go with a module which reads the custom words from a table,
and downloads them when a version number is changed. Keep it simple.
The custom dictionary could be a blob, or a list of words.

--

Matthew Jones

Norman


I've used Addict for about as long as I have Tim's stuff and it is very good. Glen Crouch whilst not the author does supply support and is generally very helpful. They used to have a mail list which was pretty good but have moved to an on-line forum which isn't well attended.

If you haven't asked Glen then I would do so.


I think that overall you have little choice other than to install the main dictionary and then to keep custom dictionaries in sync.  One thought that occurs is to have two custom dictionaries - user & approved. Every so often (daily or weekly) upload all of the user custom dictionaries to a central site, merge into the approved custom dictionary and purge it of junk, then replicate the approved custom dictionary back to the users and delete their custom dictionary.

There'll still be a performance impact but the file sizes should be kept to a minimum.


Roy Lambert