Isolating files

[Bob]

Hi there,

Can anybody offer suggestions on the best approach to overcome this
situation:

A WinForm app needs to copy files to from an external device to the local
drive. When the files are on the local drive they should not be accessible
to any user unless they access them through the user interface.

I have looked at Isolated Storage but as this is based on a user profile
(for gods sakes, why?) it is utterly useless in situations where the files
need to be available to all users of the app.

The only other idea I have is to create a folder and assign NTFS permissions
to a set account. Any interaction with the protected folder can then be done
by a Windows Service running in the correct user context. Problem with this
is it means we can't provide much feedback to the user interface, like a
progress bar as the files are copied. Unless I come up with a way for the
service to talk back to the WinForm app.

Does anyboy know of a better way to achieve this? Or failing that, can
anybody give tips on best way to gt the sevrice to talk back to the app in
real time?

Any help appreciated....

[Tom Dacon]

I don't agree that isolated storage must be bound to a user identity. When
you initialize the IsolatedStorage object, you define the scope with a
member of the IsolatedStorageScope enumeration, a bitwise-defined
enumeration. It looks to me like you could just specify Assembly or Domain
scope, or both. Shouldn't this do it?

Tom Dacon
Dacon Software Consulting

"Bob" <1@2.3> wrote in message
news:e%***************@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...

Hi there,

Can anybody offer suggestions on the best approach to overcome this
situation:

A WinForm app needs to copy files to from an external device to the local
drive. When the files are on the local drive they should not be accessible
to any user unless they access them through the user interface.

I have looked at Isolated Storage but as this is based on a user profile
(for gods sakes, why?) it is utterly useless in situations where the files
need to be available to all users of the app.

The only other idea I have is to create a folder and assign NTFS permissions to a set account. Any interaction with the protected folder can then be done by a Windows Service running in the correct user context. Problem with this is it means we can't provide much feedback to the user interface, like a
progress bar as the files are copied. Unless I come up with a way for the
service to talk back to the WinForm app.

Does anyboy know of a better way to achieve this? Or failing that, can
anybody give tips on best way to gt the sevrice to talk back to the app in
real time?

Any help appreciated....

[Steven Campbell]

Isolated storage lets you define the scope to the current application.

That may not hide it as well as you want though, but you can easily encypt
the data.
~Steve

"Bob" <1@2.3> wrote in message
news:e%***************@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...

Hi there,

Can anybody offer suggestions on the best approach to overcome this
situation:

A WinForm app needs to copy files to from an external device to the local
drive. When the files are on the local drive they should not be accessible
to any user unless they access them through the user interface.

I have looked at Isolated Storage but as this is based on a user profile
(for gods sakes, why?) it is utterly useless in situations where the files
need to be available to all users of the app.

The only other idea I have is to create a folder and assign NTFS
permissions
to a set account. Any interaction with the protected folder can then be
done
by a Windows Service running in the correct user context. Problem with
this
is it means we can't provide much feedback to the user interface, like a
progress bar as the files are copied. Unless I come up with a way for the
service to talk back to the WinForm app.

Does anyboy know of a better way to achieve this? Or failing that, can
anybody give tips on best way to gt the sevrice to talk back to the app in
real time?

Any help appreciated....