The Application Catalog

This is my favorite of what is new with FLEXnet AdminStudio. It provides a quick interface to view a package, and also offers a simple interface in which to perform tasks like validation and patch impact scans. It actually provides quite a bit so let's drill down through it...

• Conflicts - This provides a list of conflicts associated with the selected packages. There is summary information providing the number of conflicts as well as how many are automatically and manually resolvable. Naturally, this data is generated by the Conflict Wizard which lets you choose what conflicts are checked against (what packages/baselines) and lets you optionally run resolutions for conflicts and generate reports.

• Validation - Here you will see a list of all validation errors encountered by the package. Taking validation from just the basic dump of validation results a few steps further, it also provides the ability to annotate explanations for errors as well as an ability to suppress further checks for the error in the future.

• Patch Impacts - As you might expect, this presents a view of any impacts detected between the package and imported patches. Don't panic when you first take a look at this view- the default display lists all patches you have imported, not those for which you have a conflict. A message at the top of the display states the number of patches you have data for and how many impacts were detected.

• Extended Attributes - This was introduced by AdminStudio some time ago, and I think it is extremely valuable. Extended attributes allow you to associate pertinent information and links to documents with your package. You can create your own, but a good list of defaults are provided. View them all here, or click on any attribute title to edit its value.

• Dependencies - Here, you can view a list of all of files discovered during a static scan of the application package. This information is generated by the Patch Impact Analysis Wizard, but may also be generated by selecting Scan for Dependencies from the context menu within Application Manager.

• Files/Components - naturally provides a list of files from your package. Straight from the files table in the MSI database, it lists component name and each associated file name (complete with pipe-separated short and long file names when provided). If you know what you are looking for, this can be useful. However, a list of files without paths in a flat list is far less helpful than the traditional tree-view you get when editing your package in InstallShield - so you may not find any need to make use of this view.

• INI File Changes - This provides the component name and the full detail on each INI file, section, key and value (including the property used to identify its installation directory).

• Registry - Like the File/Components view, this would be much more helpful in a hierarchical tree-view format. The key, name and value are provided by component. The root for each registry value is identified numerically, which is just a little frustrating. Again, you are far more likely to view your package in InstallShield, but if you are looking for registry information here, you will need to know the root values for registry entries: 0=HKCR, 1=HKCU, 2=HKLM, 3=HKU.

• Shortcuts - The shortcuts view lists the component, shortcut name, directory and target for each shortcut included in the package. Again straight from its associated table in the registry, the information is not as user friendly as it could be.

• Merge Modules - Any merge modules included with the MSI are listed with version and language information.

• History - This is a nice new feature which lists actions taken in Application Manager for the selected package. It lists the action, date, user who performed the action and a quick description of what took place. For example: "The validation process identified 2 errors and 303 warnings" (love those validation checks!)

• Associated Patches - any imported patches that, if installed, would update the selected package are presented here. ConflictSolver examines the patches in the catalog and attempts to identify those patches which will impact this package.

• Tables - This last item provides a simple view of the Windows Installer database tables. The interface offers a drop-down box on the top of the display where you may choose the table you wish to view. Then (based on your selection) a listview containing its fields and data are provided.

Most every action here (conflict detection, validation, patch impact analysis, impact scans, etc.) are all accessible from the Application Manager by right-clicking on the selected package. If I had one complaint about the interface it would be that you can only trigger actions by right-clicking on the selected package. I repeatedly find myself right-clicking on the lower level items like Validation, expecting to see "Run Validation". This is very minor however, and I must say it is great to have access to so many operations and so much information from such a simple view! It is also worth pointing out that you can search all packages, selected groups of packages or individual packages for any information you might want to locate. This is very helpful for quickly determining what packages contain a certain file or registry entry. In fact, I wrote a tool myself to locate files within multiple MSI packages before this feature was available. Could have saved me some time here!

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