What are the basics one needs to know when porting an application to Citrix?

Question

I've developed an application (C#) that currently sits on a a number of workstations. Each workstation accesses the same database (MS-SQL). I've been asked to port this to Citrix. Can anyone offer insight into documentation or suggestion of where someone would start with this? Is the application installed on the Citrix server and then simply made available to users or do I need to do further development to make it ready for this type of deployment?

Can anyone offer insight into Citrix application development?

Answer 1

For fairly straight forward app things just run.

Does you app need use localization configuration? i.e. time / date or currency formatting? There are Citrix settings that can do many things in this area. The users computer settings can be "projected" into Citrix or they could be overridden in Citrix.

Also do you use the machine name for anything? That will be the server name and not the users local machine name.

You can get a bit of a simulation in a Windows Server environment by getting a couple of remote desktop sessions running your app.

Answer 2

I wrote a C# application for a client once, and they ran it off a Citrix server without ever informing me of this, so if you're lucky you won't need to worry about Citrix at all. The only problem I ever ran into was due to my use of ActiveReports, which released a hotfix that broke on 64-bit processors (like the one my clients used to run Citrix). If you do run into any problems, you'll have an easier time debugging them if you actually have access to the Citrix server.

Answer 3

One thing to know is possible test automation problems.
If you wont install tests automation software on the Citrix machine, testers will only have option to use software that is based on image recognition and screen coordinates. Tests written with this kind of software will break constantly. or you will have to invest in expensive Citrix dedicated test tools which are not that cheap, but whats more important the are far behind other web testing tools.