General Topics > Uniform Naming Convention (UNC)

Multi-user and client installations of TrackPro require the use of UNC path names. That being said, what is UNC?

Definition

UNC is a naming convention used primarily to specify and map network drives in Microsoft Windows. Support for UNC also appears in other operating systems via technologies like Samba. UNC names are most commonly used to reach file servers or printers on a LAN.

UNC Name Syntax

UNC names identify network resources using a specific notation. UNC names consist of three parts:

1. Server Name
2. Share Name
3. File Path (Optional)

These three elements are combined using backslashes as follows:

       \\Server_Name\Share_Name\File_Path

The server name portion of a UNC name references the strings maintained by a network naming service such as DNS or WINS. Server names are set by a system administrator. The share name portion of a UNC name references a label created by an administrator. The file path portion of a UNC name references the local subdirectories beneath the share name.

TrackPro does not require the use of the file path portion of the syntax. For the purposes of TrackPro, Let's say that you create one folder for the program files with the share name of "TrackproProgramFiles and another for the data files named "TrackProData." Also, we will assume that your server is named Server_1. The resultant UNC names would be:

       \\Server_1\TrackproProgramFiles

       \\Server_1\TrackProData