About Application Isolation; Isolating Windows Installer Packages Using Application Isolation Wizard - Novell ADMINSTUDIO 9.5 User Manual

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About Application Isolation

Application isolation, which is a technique used to minimize the dependencies of an application on system

components or dynamic elements, is one solution to component versioning conflicts. Isolation reduces versioning

conflicts by modifying an application so it always loads the versions of components and dynamic elements with

which it was originally developed and tested.

Isolation is accomplished by:

Providing DLLs and other shared components for specific applications, and

Placing information traditionally stored in the Registry into other files that specify the locations of these isolated

Application isolation provides increased stability and reliability for applications because they are unaffected by

changes caused by installation and ongoing maintenance of other applications on the system.

Depending on the isolation options chosen, you can partially or totally isolate an application. When using

assemblies and manifests to isolate applications for Windows XP systems, the assemblies can be updated

following deployment without necessitating application reinstallation.

Reasons to Isolate Applications

You would want to isolate an application if:

You want to resolve incompatibilities between different versions of shared components.

You want to reduce the complexity of the installation by storing COM activation data in a manifest instead of

the registry.

You want to insulate the application from changes to shared components.

Reasons Not to Isolate an Application

You would not want to isolate an application if, following application isolation, you discover that the application no

longer works because of an internal dependency on a component that has been moved during the isolation

Following isolation, you can use the Dynamic Dependency Scanner in InstallShield Editor to verify isolated

files are loaded from a different directory.

In addition to being able to generate an isolated version of a repackaged setup immediately after the build step in

Repackager, you can also use Application Isolation Wizard to isolate a Windows Installer package.

Application Isolation Wizard is a stand-alone tool which accepts a Windows Installer package as input and outputs

a new, isolated Windows Installer package.

AdminStudio 9.5 User Guide

Chapter 8: Converting Legacy Installations Using the Repackager Interface

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Isolating Windows Installer Packages