rajeshkumar created the topic: Advertisement in Windows Installer
The Windows Installer can advertise the availability of an application to users or other applications without actually installing the application. If an application is advertised, only the interfaces required for loading and launching the application are presented to the user or other applications. If a user or application activates an advertised interface the installer then proceeds to install the necessary components as described in Installation-On-Demand.
The two types of advertising are assigning and publishing. An application appears installed to a user when that application is assigned to the user. The Start menu contains the appropriate shortcuts, icons are displayed, files are associated with the application, and registry entries reflect the application’s installation. When the user tries to open an assigned application it is installed upon demand.
The installer registers COM class information for assigned applications beginning with the Windows 2000 and Windows XP systems. This enables the installer to install the application upon the creation of an instance of an advertised class. For more information, see Platform Support of Advertisement.
You can publish an application from the server beginning with the Windows 2000 Server. The published application is then installed through its file association or Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) type. Publishing does not populate the user interface with any of the application’s icons. The client operating system can install a published application beginning with the Windows 2000 and Windows XP systems.
Windows Installer Installation-On-Demand
With traditional installation technology, it is necessary to exit an application and rerun setup to perform an installation task. This commonly occurred when a user wanted a feature or product not chosen during the first run of setup. This often made the process of product configuration inefficient because it required the user to anticipate the functionality required before they ever used the product.
Installation-on-demand makes it possible to offer functionality to users and applications in the absence of the files themselves. This notion is known as advertisement. The Windows® Installer has the capability of advertising functionality and to make installation-on-demand of application features or entire products possible. When a user or application activates an advertised feature or product, the installer proceeds with installation of the needed components. This shortens the configuration process because additional functionality can be accessed without having to exit and rerun another setup procedure.
When a product uses the installer, a user can choose at setup time which features or applications to install and which to advertise. Then if while running an application the user requests an advertised feature that has not yet been installed, the application calls the installer to enact a just-in-time feature level installation of the necessary files. If the user activates an advertised product that has not yet been installed, the operating system calls the installer to enact a just-in-time product level installation.
Advertisement and installation-on-demand can also facilitate system management by enabling administrators to designate applications as required or optional for different groups of users. There are two types of advertising known as “assigning” and “publishing.” If an administrator assigns an application to a group, then these users can install the application on-demand. If, however, the administrator publishes the application to the group, no entry points appear to these users and installation-on-demand is only activated if another application activates the published application.
Windows Installer Resiliency
Resiliency is the ability of an application to recover gracefully from situations in which a vital component is missing, or has been replaced by an incompatible version. By authoring an installation package and using the Installer Functions, developers can use the Windows® Installer to produce resilient applications capable of recovering from such situations.
• Use the installer’s source list to increase the resiliency of applications that rely on network resources. For more information, see Source Resiliency.
• Use the installer’s API to check whether a vital feature, component, file, or file version is installed.
• Use the installer’s API to check the path to a component at run time. This reduces your application’s dependency on static file paths, which commonly differ between computers.
• Use the installer to reinstall damaged shortcuts, registry entries, and other components without having to rerun setup.
• Increase the resiliency of your product’s installation by leaving the rollback capability of the installer enabled. For more information, see Rollback Installation.
Windows Installer Customization
Because the Windows® Installer keeps all information about the installation in a relational database, the installation of an application or product can be customized for particular user groups by applying transform operations to the package. Transforms can be used to encapsulate the various customizations of a base package required by different workgroups. For more information, see Merges and Transforms.
Multiple transforms of a base package can be applied on-the-fly during installation. This provides a mechanism for efficiently assigning customized installations to different groups of users. For example, this would be useful in organizations where the finance and staff support departments require different installations of a particular product. The product can be made available to everyone in the organization by an administrative installation of the base package to a single administrative installation point. Each work group can then automatically receive their appropriate customization by means of an on-the-fly transform when they install the product.
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Rajesh Kumar
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