About Connecting to a Harmony Database Without Using Shortcut Files on Windows

By default, when connecting a client workstation to a Harmony server, shortcut files are placed at the root of the main storage drive (typically C:) pointing to the location of each network share used by the Harmony database.

However, it is also possible to configure the location of these network shares in the shortcuts.conf configuration file instead of using shortcuts. This lightens the process of accessing database files by removing the overhead from reading the shortcut files.

The shortcuts.conf file must be located in the etc subfolder of the Harmony installation directory by default, but it can be located anywhere on your computer provided that you specify the location of this file in the USA_DB_CONFIG environment variable. This can allow users to change the location of the Harmony database server they are connecting to without needing administrator privileges.