InstallTalk

Agile Point of View: The Relationship Between Installation and Licensing

Note: This is a continuation of our series on agile development processes written by Peter Varhol - principal of Technology Strategy Research, an industry research firm specializing in software development, testing, and deployment topics. Peter is a nationally recognized writer and speaker on software development topics. He is a former professor of computer science and mathematics, and has graduate degrees in computer science, applied mathematics, and psychology.

Licensing software is one of the most common areas of friction between independent software vendors and their customers. The vast majority of customers want to pay for the software they use, but the act of obtaining and applying the correct licenses to the correct software can be burdensome. If independent software vendors can't deliver the license quickly and easily when it's needed, they risk losing the sale altogether, or at the very least unnecessarily antagonizing their customers.

To make it easier on their customers, an increasing number of independent software vendors are providing flexibility in their licensing options. For example, users can unlock individual features of applications or suites with a visit to a licensing website, or by having a license key emailed to them. In either case, it takes just a few minutes between the reception of the license key and the ability of the customer to start using the application productively.

The way to do this is to package the products into individual suites for common installation, but also provide the option of installing them as individual products. The independent software vendor maintains a single install with the ability to install and unlock one or more individual products as appropriate. The friction between application need and satisfaction is almost entirely eliminated.

At least one independent software vendor has used the ability to package together and license separately to offer only a single installation for its entire product line. This software vendor uses a license that floats across all of the products on a single computer, so that users can install all of them, and use those products that they need at the moment. If they need more than one at a time, they purchase multiple licenses. But all of the software products are packaged and installed together.

This business strategy totally eliminates the license friction between the independent software vendor and the customer. It isn't a strategy for all software vendors, but it is an example of how both licensing and installation can work together to support a business strategy. In many cases, thinking of licensing and installation together enables independent software vendors to refine their business models and even come up with new approaches to satisfy customer demand while not increasing development costs.

In addition to benefiting independent software vendors, enterprise software users increasingly want more detail into their application use. IT management is committed to controlling software costs by ensuring a high level of license use. It does neither the enterprise nor the independent software vendor any good to have large numbers of licenses not in use – the enterprise has wasted money, and the independent software vendor isn't likelyta to get upgrades or maintenance for those licenses.

Tagging software helps address this problem. Software tagging is evolving as an industry standard, enabling software independent software vendors to create smarter applications that give customers better information on installation and use for software asset management and license optimization initiatives.

Installation can help with the tagging process, by supporting the creation of software tags in the installation package in accordance with these evolving industry standards. This capability will enable independent software vendors to help enterprise customers by delivering better visibility into installed software in order to manage costs and improve software compliance.

InstallAnywhere 2011: Create Better Software Installers Faster with Smarter Merge Modules

InstallAnywhere 2011 supports the evolving needs of agile teams to develop, package, install and iterate in the fast-paced, dynamic environments that mark today’s development shops.  The new release provides significantly advanced merge module handling in a number of areas to provide a better multi-platform software installation experience from install to uninstall for developers and end-users. The following takes a closer look at InstallAnywhere 2011’s new features surrounding merge modules.

External Resource Bundle Support for Merge Modules

In InstallAnywhere 2011, merge modules can now access their own external resource bundles and are also able to access the external resource bundles of their parent installer during the installation and uninstallation phases. This is applicable to one-level nested merge modules and to multiple-merge modules which get installed with a single parent. This feature helps prevent duplicating resource bundle keys in the parent and merge module. The merge module has free access to the resource bundle keys from the parent.

Common Uninstaller for Merge Modules

In earlier InstallAnywhere versions, the user had to take care of uninstalling merge modules either during the start of post-uninstall or during the end of pre-uninstall. InstallAnywhere 2011 now manages the removal of all merge modules. You can choose to implement a single uninstaller which can uninstall both your main project as well as your merge modules.

To specify this option for a dynamic merge module, select the Uninstall Merge Module when parent is uninstalled option on the Install tab of the Dynamic Merge Module customizer on the Organization > Modules subtask for the specific merge module. The point of uninstallation of merge modules can also be configured using the Uninstall Merge Modules uninstaller action in the Uninstall task. You can specify this option for an individual merge module by selecting the Uninstall Merge Module when parent is uninstalled option on the Install Merge Module action customizer in the Install task.

Unified Progress Bar for Merge Modules

In previous InstallAnywhere versions, the user was not aware of the progress of the merge module installation and if the merge module was large, it could appear as though the installation was hung.

In InstallAnywhere 2011, the installation progress of merge modules is merged into the main installer’s progress information. Therefore, the end user is able to see the installation progress of a merge module reflected in the main installer’s progress bar on the Install Progress panel.

Consolidated Logging for Parent and Merge Modules

InstallAnywhere 2011 allows a merge module’s installation log to be consolidated into the parent’s installation log by selecting the Add merge module log to parent log option available in the merge module's customizer. For merge modules that are imported as a dynamic merge module from Organization > Merge Modules subtask, then this setting is available in the Install section of the customizer.

Stay tuned to InstallTalk for closer looks into how the specific new features in InstallAnywhere 2011 are saving time and resulting in better cross-platform installers. If you’d like to find more information in the meantime, please visit the InstallAnywhere 2011 page on our Website. As always, we also welcome hearing your specific examples of how the new features will impact your efforts.  

Introducing InstallAnywhere 2011

Already the leading multiplatform development solution, InstallAnywhere 2011 is a robust new release that further empowers multiplatform developers and software producers to comprehensively manage all phases of the installation lifecycle as well as provides exciting functionality to support the growing number of agile development teams.

The following overview outlines what’s new in InstallAnywhere 2011 and be sure to stay tuned to InstallTalk as upcoming posts will get detailed on specific new features and how they can benefit your team.

Expanded Platform Support: InstallAnywhere 2011 supports the latest and most updated platforms including Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), SUSE Linux 11.3, Ubuntu 10.10, Solaris 11, HP-UX 11i, AIX 7.1, IBM i5/OS, Z/OS, RHEL 6 and Fedora 14.

Enhanced Merge Modules Features: InstallAnywhere 2011 provides a single uninstaller that will work with your main project as well as any other merge modules.  This new capability reduces potential uninstall errors and saves time for the set up author.  

Unified Progress Bar: A unified progress bar has been developed to show installation progress for all included components providing greater insight into the overall software installation.

Extended External Resource Bundle Support: External Resource Bundle support enables the localization of installer strings. Merge modules can now leverage the external resource bundles from the parent as well.

Enhanced Installation Logging: Merge modules now have installation logs in addition to the parent log files. Developers also have the ability to consolidate the parent and merge module log files.  All logging related settings have been consolidated into a single log settings task.

Enhanced Support for Third-Party Compression Algorithms: InstallAnywhere 2011 allows set up authors to expand 7-Zip (LZMA) and TAR compressed archives on their target system offering the ability to expand these archives in a fast and reliable manner.

Complex Rule Expressions with Multiple Operators: InstallAnywhere 2011 provides the ability to write complex rule expressions (and/or/not) with the application logic. These complex rule expressions help set up authors to better mirror their complex business logic.

Java Virtual Machine (JVM) Enhancements: InstallAnywhere 2011 supports the latest versions of JVM for Sun, IBM, Apple and HP (ver 1.4x, 1.5x and 1.6x), with advanced search enhancements for the developer to put in their installer.

JVM Download at Runtime: InstallAnywhere 2011 provides the option to download a JVM from the Internet in real time if the JVM is not found on the end user machine.  This capability not only saves time, but provides a smaller footprint for the installer package.   

“Signed” Installations: Installers now have the ability to have custom code archives or their dependencies as signed  JARS.  InstallAnywhere will extract files and make use of Java to verify the signature, ensuring the safety of these custom code JARS.

IDE Enhancements: InstallAnywhere 2011 provides a list of preset variables that can eliminate manual entry and a table that allows quick viewing of all variables in a project. In addition, there is now a variable search and replace function that can be utilized in any of the installation tasks / phases to enable rapid changes. 

To get further information about the new release right now, check out our new InstallAnywhere 2011 Resources page. As always, we welcome your feedback and especially look forward to hearing stories about which features motivated existing customers to get current and new customers to acquire InstallAnywhere for the first time.

 

Tips for Building Mac OS X Installers with InstallAnywhere

By Fletcher Oliver

I'm a Mac user, and I wanted to share with my fellow developers a few tips I've learned for building Mac OS X installers with InstallAnywhere.

First, you should always determine exact requirements for the resulting installer. Do you need a simple installer for a non-experienced end user to install a complex product, or a highly customizable installer for higher-level users? Prioritizing and defining what features to include or exclude proves essential in the planning stage and results in an easy-to-use interface.

While InstallAnywhere runs on any Java-enabled platform, each platform necessitates different features. In the case of Mac OS X, default install folders and aliases are defined separately, which causes a need for default permissions for files and folders on the target system. These permissions can be configured through navigating to Project>Platforms>Mac OS X in the InstallAnywhere Advanced Designer and selecting the appropriate permissions checkboxes for default install folders and permissions.

In addition, you can enable installer authentication, which should result in the installer supplying the correct credentials to the operating system, in order to elevate the privileges. You can also choose to bundle a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) for use by the target application and the installer. Supported Java Virtual Machines that are supported through Mac OS X include the following versions: 1.4x, 1.5x, and 1.6x.

Another step that is essential to creating efficient and functional installers is properly identifying the installer itself. This can be achieved by navigating to Project>File Settings in the Advance Designer and defining the File Modification Timestamp Behavior. These features enable you to track changes in software versions and prevent the possibility of essential files being overwritten on the target system through using one of these four timestamps.

Also in this section, the default overwrite behavior can be set adding another failsafe to important files being overwritten. The default setting is to overwrite the old files and prompt the user if the files are newer, but this can be changed through these settings, customizing to the specific needs of your installer. Once again these options should be set to specify what you want your version of installer to do or not, making the planning stage before the actual creation of the installer essential.

As a Mac user myself, I hope I was able to this shed some light on the process and help add some more great Mac OS X installers to the market.