David,

The best way I can explain the difference between Load and Load As is to
Load what Save As is to Save. For ins6tance, it is possible to have a
save action that saves more than one dirty editor (e.g File/Save All in
the RTC client) but a Save As can only be issued for a single editor
since the user will be prompted to enter the name of the file the
content is to be saved to. When you perform a Load, you can load any
number of projects since they are all loaded into the same target
sandbox (but you can specify which sandbox you want to target). With
Load As, you can only pick a single folder/file to load, since you are
required to enter the name that the folder/file will have in the target
sandbox.

From what you describe, it sounds like you don't want Load As at all
but just want to use Load and specify an alternate sandbox. You seem to
imply in your description that Load will only load into the Eclipse
workspace but that is not the case, you can pick alternate sandboxes in
the load wizard by clicking Next on the first page and expanding the
Advanced Options section. You will get similar options to what you see
in the Advanced Options section of the Load As wizard.

Hope this helps,
Michael

David Ward wrote:
I'd like to make greater use the SCM "Load as" feature but there are
some problems that I haven't figured out. The problems may be with the
way we think about this option or they may be real design issues ..
not sure.

When "Load as" was released (with 2.0 I think) my team and I had
assumed that "Load as" was the same as "Load", but with the added
ability to choose your own sandbox ... different from the Eclipse
workspace.

Not so apparently, "Load as" actually carries with it some other
important differences that make using it a little tricky for us.

Below are the differences we've observed here .. at least we think
we've observed this using our RTC 2.0 GA product.



1) You can't choose "Load as" at the workspace level ... it's not
supported there. Only "Load" is supported at the workspace level so if
you want to load all components in one operation, you're stuck with
the Eclipse workspace.

2) You can't select multiple components and then use "Load as".
"Load as" only appears to be offered if a single component is
selected. Once again, if you want to load more than one component in a
single operation, you must use "Load" and live within the Eclipse
workspace.

3) "Load" seems to offer a broader range of choices than "Load as"

a. Find and load Eclipse projects
b. Load the root folders of the components as projects
c. Browse the components and select the folders to be loaded
d. Do not load anything
e. Reload projects that are out of sync

"Load As" offers:

f. Load and create Eclipse projects
g. Load the selected folders and create Eclipse projects for projects
found within the folder hierarchy
h. Load the selected folders but do not create Eclipse projects

I'm not sure whether f. is the same as a.

4) "Load" appears to behave differently from "Load as" regarding its
use of the top-level folders in components.
I suppose that relates to choice b. above .. it's not offered for
"Load as"

We've worked around or accepted these differences, but the end result
seems to be that many of us don't use "Load as" at all. Some of us
even switch our Eclipse workspace as a workaround .. not particularly
convenient but effective.

Is there a reason why "Load as" can't be the same "Load" in all
respects except the choice of sandbox ?

Cheers
Dave