Loadnrun is a simple solution for non-privileged users on Windows machines to deploy OpenROAD eClient applications. It is a logical replacement of the OpenROAD eClient Mode 2 runtime.

eClient applications could not easily be run in UAC-enabled environment, were dependent on Internet Explorer, and required a browser window to remain open to run when running in eclient Mode 0 and eclient Mode 1. Because Microsoft Corporation no longer supports Windows XP (which is also no longer supported by OpenROAD), it is increasingly difficult to run applications with UAC turned off.

Loadnrun, however, is designed to run with the default User Account Control (UAC) setting in Microsoft Windows 7 or later and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 or later (UAC enabled). Loadnrun applications are not dependent on Microsoft Internet Explorer and in fact do not require an open browser window to be run.

Loadnrun applications run in their own window and are identical to eClient applications that run in mode 2. Mode 0 and mode 1 of eClient applications are deprecated in this version of OpenROAD and will no longer be supported in future versions of OpenROAD. For more information, see Run Mode on the Control Tab under "How You Can Deploy a Web-based OpenROAD Application with the OpenROAD eClient Packaging Tool" in the Workbench User Guide.

But an application that was developed as an OpenROAD eClient application can easily be converted to run as a Loadnrun client application with few or no changes. The following explains how the behavior of the OpenROAD eClient contrasts with that of the OpenROAD Loadnrun runtimes.

An OpenROAD eClient application places all image files and resources into an application deployment directory. This application directory could be called myapp1, for example. OpenROAD Workbench has an option that included the contents of this directory into a file called myapp1.cab. This Microsoft CAB file, with the OpenROAD-supplied oraxp.cab, was then referenced in a web-page URL as an ActiveX resource.

You were then required to use Microsoft Internet Explorer to download, install, and launch on the client machine the eClient runtime (contained in the oraxp.cab) and the user application (contained in the myapp1.cab). This capability was dependent on Microsoft Internet Explorer and required at minimum Power User (or Administrative) rights to download and launch each eClient application.

Each time an eClient application was launched on the client machine, a check was made to see if a newer version of the CAB file had been placed in the directory referenced on the web page. If a newer version was on the server, it was automatically downloaded and installed on the client machine. (For more information about the eClient, see How You Can Deploy a Web-based OpenROAD Application with the OpenROAD eClient Packaging Tool in the Workbench User Guide.)

In contrast, an OpenROAD Loadnrun client application will stores its image files and application resources in an application deployment directory similar to the eClient application deployment directory. Instead of taking the contents of this directory and creating a Microsoft CAB file, the OpenROAD Server is given access to this directory. If the directory that contains the files necessary to run an application were called myapp1, this name would be used to download and launch a client application.

Unlike the OpenROAD eClient, there is no file called oraxp.cab that contains the Loadnrun runtime. Instead, an MSI-based installer provides the Loadnrun client runtime with an optional Ingres Net Client runtime.

There are separate versions of the Loadnrun runtime for OpenROAD 5.1, OpenROAD 6.0, and OpenROAD 6.2. Each is packaged as a standard MSI-based installer. The installation of the Loadnrun runtime requires Administrative rights because it is a machine-wide runtime. After being installed, no special rights are needed for users who want to use Loadnrun. (Because it is an MSI-based installation, the runtime could be pushed onto each machine by the domain administrator.)

After the Loadnrun runtime is installed on the client machine, a user needs only to call the Loadnrun runtime and pass the following pieces of information to it:

You can launch the Loadnrun application from a command line or shortcut that has the following attributes:

The Loadnrun client takes this information and does the following:

None of these steps require special permissions by the client user.

Different versions of the same application (using the same or different versions of the Loadnrun runtime) can coexist on the same machine. The only thing an application installer needs to create is a shortcut that launches the application using the Loadnrun runtime.

The Loadnrun runtime and the OpenROAD eClient can co-exist on the same machine. The Loadnrun runtime has more flexibility and reduced user permission requirements than the OpenROAD eClient runtime.

The main Loadnrun runtime files are orrun.dll and w4glapp.exe. The primary OpenROAD eClient runtime files are orunn.dll and oraxp.dll. The main OpenROAD runtime files are or4glnt.dll and w4gldev.exe. The orrun.dll used by the Loadnrun and eClient runtimes are identical. The w4glapp.exe used by the Loadnrun runtime and the w4gldev.exe used by the OpenROAD runtime provide similar functionality. The w4glapp.exe utility is described in How to Run Applications Using the w4glapp loadnrun Utility.

A typical OpenROAD application may be deployed using the Loadnrun runtime, the eClient runtime, or the OpenROAD runtime. You can develop and test the OpenROAD application using OpenROAD Workbench and then deploy it using any of the runtimes.

OpenROAD eClient packages are virtually identical to the Loadnrun packages. The install4gl.txt used by both packages are identical. A user needs no special permissions to download and launch a Loadnrun deployed application.