The Best Damn Windows Server 2003 Book Period- P65:The latest incarnation of Microsoft’s server product,Windows Server 2003, brings many new features and improvements that make the network administrator’s job chapter will briefly summarize what’s new in 2003 and introduce you to the four members of the Windows Server 2003 family: the Web Edition, the Standard Edition, the Enterprise Edition, and the Datacenter Edition. | 606 Chapter 18 Deploying Software via Group Policy Windows Installer Packages .msi In the early days of Windows computing you could use a third-party installation and packaging tool to simplify software deployment including Microsoft s SMS . Beginning with Windows 2000 the new Windows Installer technology became available this provides a native packaging and distribution tool for Windows operating systems and Group Policy provides a way to distribute software without buying a distribution product. The Installer technology is made up of the following components The Installer service which is an operating system service that uses Windows Installer packages to perform software installation modification and uninstallation. The .msi file which is a group of files compressed together along with the appropriate scripting to install and configure the software. It is essentially a relational database containing a number of tables that holds information about the application. The package can be configured to handle upgrades as well as new installations. The application programming interface API by which applications interface with the Installer service. A big advantage of Windows Installer is its ability to roll back to the former state if problems occur during an installation. The Installer service can also monitor the state of installed selfrepairing applications and detect missing or corrupt program files. The service can then automatically restore the damaged or missing components so that the application will work properly again. The database design of the Installer package makes it fast to query and provides for smaller file sizes. The information in the tables includes data that will allow for different installation scenarios so that there is a set of information about how to install the application clean for the first time how to install it over a previous version and so forth. Because the Installer service tracks the installation of the application s features and .
