Application Compatibility - Overview

In this video, we chat with Robert Flaming about application compatibility issues around Windows Installer for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Mark Taylor, from our first Application Compatibility video, sits in as well to fire off some important
questions (well, questions that are perhaps more educated than I would ask ).
So if you work on a product that is using Windows Installer and you are planning on deploying your product to Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008, make sure to tune in! This video is almost all audio (very little need for video), so feel free to download the audio file for that next car ride you have if you wish!
Some links of interest:
Enjoy!
I am interested in more details of how to chain MSI's. I've been using merge modules to combine multiple products into one installer. The Suite I install has products developed in three sites around the world. It has been very difficult to get the install working correctly since we run into sequencing issues as all three products need to run custom actions throughout the install.
I would very much like to have each site develope their own MSI and then the suite installer could invoke each one and any install problems could be addressed by the team that built that installer. In this talk it isn't clear to me whether Robert is talking about chaining as done in MSI 4.5, or whether he is talking about chaining via an executable (.exe) using MSI 3.1 (for example).
My requirements are to support GPO installations. This, as I understand it, precludes using a .exe chainer. GPO requires an MSI package to be run without any command line configurations. I need to supply an MSI. I guess I could supply multiple MSI's but this makes life complicated for admins distributing the suite.
I'm evaluating MSI 4.5. I understand it supports chaining via a new table in the MSI database. I'm authoring the installer with Wix. Does Wix support populating the chained install table?
Robert talked about "Advertising" applications as a key part of chaining. Was this just a way to get around UAC prompts at each install? My applications need to be installed at once, not on user access. Our security software should run without the user doing anything. Is there a way the parent installer could advertise each sub application and then invoke them to get them to install?
I would not make a genaralization about linux desktop from SUSE since it's main focus is not the desktop in the first place. But I do have to agree that what he was explaining soulded like APT to me too (and some). Both sides of that coin have some good and bad. Some standardized rules should resolve some dependency issues.
Today, I changed to Windows 7 and I feel right with windows 7, windows vista is too bad
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