Chapter 18. Testing for Application Compatibility

   

There are many concerns during the deployment of a new operating system. If you are considering deploying the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 family and Microsoft Windows XP, you're probably concerned about how well these operating systems will support the applications that actually run your day-to-day business. Addressing these concerns will occupy much of the planning and testing phases of your deployment project.

The Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) contains several tools that make this process easier to manage. You can download this tool from Microsoft's Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/release.asp?releaseid=42071. The ACT provides tools to test applications both during the development phase and during deployments. It also provides tools that allow you to gather data about the applications installed on every Windows computer on the network and to package the necessary compatibility fixes for each of those computers. Those tools 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 the software used in your enterprise.

  • Application Verifier.

    This tool assists developers looking for compatibility issues with a new application. It's also possible for information technology (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. This tool can also package fixes into a custom compatibility database that can then be distributed to computers on the network.

In addition to describing these tools, this chapter describes how to collect an application inventory. It also shows how to test applications for compatibility, how to create fixes for application compatibility, and how to distribute those fixes. Last it includes a checklist you can use during compatibility testing. For more information about the tools mentioned in this chapter, including more detailed documentation, see http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/compatible/appcompat.mspx.


   
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Introducing Microsoft Windows Server 2003
Introducing Microsoft Windows Server(TM) 2003
ISBN: 0735615705
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 153

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