Sunday, February 3, 2008

MAV 4.5: How to perform a Dynamic Suite Composition

The blog of Justin Zarb details a step-by-step guide of how the Dynamic Suite Composition (DSC) in Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 functions. He describes how to include a Snag-It bubble into an existing Office 2007 bubble. There are not many technical details about how DSC works, but some interesting facts are mentioned there:
  • Appearantly, it is possible to compose multiple bubbles but only one level deep. If you attempt to include an OSD file that in itself has another DSC, this third bubble is not included.

  • Sequencing tip: make sure your sequencer workstation has all the software installed that you want your second bubble to hook onto. For example: if you are sequencing an application that integrated with Office 2007, do a fat installation of Office 2007 first, and only then start the monitoring and sequencing of the add-ins.

    Personal note: also for applications that depend on Java or Oracle clients, you obviously first need to prepare your sequencer workstation by installing those core components.

  • The user changes that are made in the dynamically composed bubbles are all redirected to the primary bubble's UsrVo_sftfs.pkg files.
I am already planning for a few weeks to delve deeper into the DSC of MAV 4.5 beta and to check in more details what Justin describes, but a project at a customer currently prioritizes my spare time into non-MAV related things. Be sure to check regularly here again for more information on DSC.