The Novell Controls for ActiveX and Visual Basic:
Setting Up Your Development Environment

How you should configure your development environment depends partly on what type of applications you plan to develop. Most developers who use Visual Basic and ActiveX develop applications that can be categorized as access-controlled or access-controlling.

Access-controlled. The application only uses network resources that have been granted to the user, and which can be administered through existing network management utilities, such as NWAdmin and ConsoleOne. Applications of this type can be developed on a workstation attached to NetWare servers on your corporate network.

Access-controlling. The application grants access to network resources. Network management utilities and applications that need to create new NDS objects fit into this model. To develop applications of this type, you should have a NetWare development server with its own NDS tree, separate from your corporate tree.

[Digression alert!] Access-controlling applications can be further categorized as single-server and distributed applications. Single-server applications provide identical services from every server they are installed on. Distributed applications provide services that can be partitioned asymmetrically, that is, with different services provided by at least two servers in the network. When developing distributed applications, you must have multiple servers in your development tree. But since Visual Basic and ActiveX are focused on client-side application development, we'll assume that a single development server will be sufficient. [End digression]

To develop network applications using the Novell Controls for ActiveX, you will need at least:

• A PC with a 486 or Pentium processor; Pentium 90 MHZ or better recommended.
• 24 MB RAM, 32 MB or more recommended.
• 200 MB available hard disk space for Visual Basic, Internet Explorer, the Microsoft Developer Net work (MSDN) tools, the Novell Client, and the Novell Controls for ActiveX.
• Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device.
• A CD-ROM drive.
• VGA or higher resolution monitor, Super-VGA or higher recommended.
• Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3 or later.
• The appropriate Novell Client for your operating system (see http://www.novell.com/download/).
• Microsoft Visual Basic version 5 or 6, or Visual Studio version 5 or 6.
• A server running NetWare 4.11 or 5.

Disk space requirements vary considerably, depending on which edition of Visual Basic or Visual Studio you use and which tools you install. See Microsoft's web site for more detailed requirements at http://www.microsoft/products/develop.htm.

To set up your development workstation, perform the following steps:

1. Set up the workstation hardware and connect the workstation to the network.

2. Install the version of Windows you plan to use (if it is not installed already). If you are using Windows NT 4.0, verify that Service Pack 3 or later is installed.

3. Install the appropriate Novell Client for your operating system. Novell clients can be downloaded free at http://www.novell.com/download/.

4. Install Visual Basic or Visual Studio (the Visual Basic and Visual Studio installation programs also install Internet Explorer and the MSDN tools).

5. Following the instructions below, download and install the Novell Controls for ActiveX.

Consult the documentation for each of the components listed above for detailed installation instructions.