Application Compatibility

   

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The deployment of an operating system in any organization is a very large project. Application compatibility with the new operating system is one of the most critical steps in the testing and planning phases of a successful deployment. This entails verifying that all existing software and any planned software will function correctly on the new operating system at least as well as it did on the old operating system.

The Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) contains several tools that make this process easier to manage. The ACT provides tools to test applications both during the development phase and during deployments. It also provides tools that enable you to gather data about the applications installed on every Windows computer in the network and to package the necessary compatibility fixes for each of those computers. Tools included in the ACT include the following:

• Analyzer.

  This tool gathers information about every program installed on your network. The analyzer can be used to automate the process of creating an inventory of software used in your enterprise.

• Application Verifier.

  This tool assists developers when looking for possible compatibility issues with a new application. It's also possible for IT professionals to use this tool to determine whether a proposed software package has any common compatibility issues.

• Compatibility Administrator.

  This tool determines the necessary compatibility fixes to support an application in Windows. The tool can also package the fixes into a custom compatibility database that can then be distributed to computers on the network.

Chapter 18 , "Testing for Application Compatibility," describes the ACT in much more detail and shows you how to use it to test the compatibility of applications.

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