InfoPath Exclusive locking on XML files

[marked23]

I need InfoPath to release the lock on a file without actually closing
infopath.

My users use InfoPath to edit XML files. They want to view these files in a
browser at the same time... Side-by-side.

Except once you save changes in InfoPath, InfoPath takes an exclusive lock
on the file and nothing else can open teh file to read the changes.

Is there any way to convince InfoPath to either not lock the file, or at
least release the file without closing the app/doc?

Thanks,

-Mark

 

[Ben walters]

marked
The issue experiencing is due to the fact that when you attempt to open an
XML file in IE it looks at the processing instructions and if the correct
application is available on ther users machine then attempts to open the XML
file with that app, in this cast InfoPath.
A couple of potential ways around this are
- Write the InfoPath form out to a separate XML file (remove the processing
Instructions) and direct your parallel users to open this file.
- Create a central storage location for the data e.g. SQL and when the form
is saved update the data in the database and have your Parallel users look at
this data

 

[marked23]

marked
The issue experiencing is due to the fact that when you attempt to open an
XML file in IE it looks at the processing instructions

Well that's not it really... I guess I didn't explain the whole deal about
how IE opens the file. Actually ASP.Net is trying to open it and transform
the XML against some XSL to produce some HTML that is then sent to the
browser. What's failing, because of the file lock, is the asp.net process
attempting to open the XML file... even for read only.

I would be thrilled if there were a button in InfoPath to "Release" the
lock... sort of like the "Apply" button we see on windows dialogs.

 

[Ben walters]

I don't know of any button that will release the lock, you could to put some
custom code behind the save event that way you might be able to save off the
form in code and close off any locks