Import Files Vs. Moving Directly to Y:

Currently most of the teamsite users at my company work directly from the Y:. They create/copy/move files from their mapped Y: drive in Windows.

My question is, what is the benefit of using Import Files/Move from the Teamsite GUI as opposed to using the aforementioned method?

What is gained by using the Import Files method through the GUI, or what is lost by not using this method and using the Windows file system?

System:
Teamsite 5.5.2
Windows 2000 Server

Thanks in advance.

Adam
RHI

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Comments

JonathonG

The biggest thing I can think of is lock management. When you use import, TeamSite manages locking the file for you. I believe it also does a check of the lock state before allowing you to import. Using the Y: drive directly, you have to manage locks manually.

Jonathon
Independent Interwoven Contractor

iwovGraduate

some more information:

You will lose MetaData (extended attributes) if you manipulate files directly from Y:\. If you use copy/move from TeamSite GUI, MetaData will be preserved. You can also preserve history when you use Copy to Area.

I am surprised you are not considering edits. (maybe in your environment you do more create/copy more frequently than edits ?) I would think, editing files is more frequently used as compared to copy/move, etc. If you use the UI, you will have to go through the upload/download of launchpad. If you use Y:\ directly you avoid this, but you lose locking. Importing a large number of files via the UI could be cumbersome. Manipulating Y: is relatively easy as most (Windows) users will be familiar and comfortable using the Windows explorer interface.

Hope that helps.

Adam Stoller

If you set up launchpad to use Direct Edit mode (I believe that's what it's called - been a while since I've played with that) - you can avoid the download/upload aspects of LaunchPad - as it will edit files through the share-point to the server's location of your workarea rather than downloading the files to your local disk for editing.

--fish
Senior Consultant, Quotient Inc.
http://www.quotient-inc.com

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Migrateduser

Edits were part of the consideration, I forgot to mention them.

I think the metadata and the history are the two things I'd be most concerned about losing when moving files over the Y:. I will take these into consideration.

Thank you all for the information, it was very helpful.

whysguy

Also, if you are using DAS, manipulating DCR's through the file-system interface will cause a "DAS out-of-sync condition". See page 106 of the DataDeploy 5.6 admin guide for details.

- Billy