System Requirements for MainBoss Advanced

Operating System

Thinkage supports MainBoss Advanced on the following operating systems:

• Windows XP Professional or better, with Service Pack 3 or later (XP Professional should provide satisfactory performance with one or two simultaneous users, provided that both users aren't on external machines)
• Windows Server 2003 (with Service Pack 2) or later, including Windows Server 2003 R2; or
• Windows Vista Business (with Service Pack 3) or better; or
• Windows Server 2008 (with Service Pack 2) or later
• Windows Server 2008 R2 or later
• Windows 7 Professional or better (see above note on XP Professional)
• Windows 8 Professional or better (see above note on XP Professional)

We do not recommend the 64-bit versions of Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. For other systems, both 32-bit or 64-bit versions are acceptable. We do not recommend Windows XP Home, Windows Vista Home, Windows Vista Basic, or Windows 7 Home.

.NET Framework

Before beginning the installation process, every computer where MainBoss Advanced will run must have the .NET framework installed (version 4 or later). If you do not already have an appropriate version of .NET, you can obtain it for free using the standard Windows Update.

Microsoft SQL Server

MainBoss Advanced uses Microsoft SQL Server 2005, 2008 or 2008 R2 to read and write all data. SQL Server must be installed at your site before you can begin using MainBoss Advanced. Specifically, you must have either:

• SQL Server 2005 SP2 (Version 9.00.4035.00 or greater), or
• SQL Server 2008 or SQL Server 2008 R2 (no minimum version, but as always, you should use Windows Update to get the most recent updates)

MainBossRemote: The Web Access and Web Requests Modules

MainBoss's Web-based modules are implemented using an ASP.NET web application which must run on a Windows system. This means that the web site used by this software must be hosted on a Windows system and must use the IIS web server. We recommend that you use IIS 7 or 7.5 running on either Windows Server 2008 (with Service Pack 2 or later) or R2. (Some sites have managed to run MainBoss's web-based modules under IIS 6 on Windows Server 2003, but we do not provide technical support for the installation or configuration process.)

Important: There are so many different types of cell phones and other mobile devices that we cannot test which ones do or don't work with MainBoss. Furthermore, cell phone service providers sometimes meddle with web transmissions (e.g. by adding advertisements) or else set up connections in ways that prevent devices from using their full capabilities.

Therefore, we cannot list which devices or service providers are suitable for use with MainBoss. If you wish to determine the suitability of a particular device connected through a particular service provider, we would be happy to set up a site that you can use for testing. Contact info@mainboss.com for assistance.

Microsoft Report Viewer 2010

In order to create reports, Microsoft Report Viewer 2010 must be installed on every system where MainBoss runs. The software may be downloaded free from here.

Hardware

We recommend that any computer running MainBoss Advanced should have:

• Windows XP and Windows Server 2003: at least a 3 GHz P4 processor with 1 GB of RAM
• Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 (including Windows Server 2008 R2), and Windows 7: at least dual 2.5 GHz processors with 2 GB of RAM

In both cases, get the fastest RAM available. Ideally, the monitor screen should have a resolution of 1280 by 1024, but you can get away with 1024 by 768 using MainBoss's facilities for hiding detail panels.

Since MainBoss Advanced requires SQL Server 2005, 2008 or 2008 R2, you should also check the hardware requirements of the SQL Server package you intend to use. SQL Server will run on a single computer; if you also intend to use this computer to run MainBoss, the computer's hardware and operating system should satisfy the requirements of both SQL Server and MainBoss. Every other computer where you intend to run MainBoss has to satisfy MainBoss's hardware and software requirements, but doesn't have to satisfy SQL Server's.

If you intend to run MainBoss on multiple computers, we strongly recommend that MainBoss users should belong to a domain. A domain lets MainBoss users sign on with the same login name and password on different computers. You can create a domain with Microsoft Server software, or with a Linux network running Samba.

If you're not currently using a domain setting and are thinking about getting one, we recommend Windows Small Business Server. If you'll have fewer than five people using MainBoss simultaneously, you can use the basic version of Small Business Server. If you'll have more people using MainBoss simultaneously, you should get the premium version of Small Business Server, which includes an appropriate version of SQL Server as part of the package. (In order to get an appropriate version of SQL Server, you must get Windows Small Business Server 2003, Release 2 or later—earlier releases have earlier versions of SQL Server, which can't be used for MainBoss.)

Technical Specifications

MainBoss Advanced is written in the C# programming language using Thinkage's Extensible Application Framework (XAF). It makes use of Microsoft's .NET and ASP.NET frameworks. Each client program communicates directly with Microsoft SQL Server in order to read and write to a SQL Server database containing MainBoss data. MainBoss Advanced uses the same general logic as MainBoss Basic, e.g. for scheduling preventive maintenance and for dealing with labor/materials on work orders.