mardi 18 mai 2010

The premium App-V package editor and administrator's companion


Building on the success of hugely popular SFT Explorer - trusted by thousands of App-V professionals around the world - Application Virtualization Explorer (AVE) introduces a new era in App-V package editors and viewers. AVE adds several new exiting features into already familiar and easy to use and understandable interface. AVE is not SFT only viewer anymore, but full-blown App-V package editor which targets all use cases for App-V packages, be it SCCM integrated use, traditional App-V infrastructure or custom delivery method with App-V package MSIs.

Review App-V packages

Whether your App-V packaged virtual application comes from the Microsoft Sequencer or especially from any automatic conversion tool or process, you will want to review the package with certainty that you are going to see all there is to the package. That is, there's no hidden settings (such as logically deleted registry entries or VFS mappings) your packaging tool did not reveal or took onboard accidently. This with easiness that you have grown to expect from professional packaging tools.

AVE will show and gives access to all important bits and pieces there truly is to the App-V package and its inner composition. This gives the possibility to be certain no unexpected side-effects will pop up when deploying the package to actual clients.

AVE's unique Virtualized System View™ will simulate the way package would be seen on the local machine if run inside App-V's Virtual Environment (VE), all without needing to have App-V Client locally present or package importent into it.

For enabling understanding of complex Dynamic Suiting scenarios, AVE is able to perform App-V style dynamic suite composition action on the package by loading additional SFT files into same view as the main package. This shows how the data will be merged when the suiting kicks in at the client, something that cannot be simulated or compensated by original Sequencing tool. As truly one of a kind feature, AVE can do full merger of two or more SFT files, resulting one single logical and physical package that no longer needs suiting to work as a combinatorial virtual environment, but can be deployed as standalone unified package without requirements for DSC at run-time.


Edit App-V packages

While other App-V related editors in the market currently are limited to making changes to plain-text files (OSD, SPRJ and XML manifest file) in the full suite of App-V package files, AVE is the only product to handle not only changes both to plain-text stored data, but also for contents of the the binary package file (SFT file). Building on the years of in-depth experience of App-V file-format, AVE enables stand-alone and integrated full-package editing capabilities. This makes AVE a one-stop shop for all common package editing needs, without having to resort into going back to Sequencer environment, which can be saved for those situations really needing installation monitoring workflow.

AVE supports all past and present App-V and SoftGrid formats, 32-bit or 64-bit (App-V 4.6 only), in both reading and writing capability. With AVE, encoding parameters for saved and modified package can be affected to the finest detail, a feature simply not available through any other means. For instance, package can be modified but retained in the same internal version level (version numbering, GUIDs and "sequencing" history) as the original package was, making it indistinguishable from the original from App-V's perspective.

With AVE, there is no need for reverting back to clean environment or setting up secondary partitions in order to open and edit internal files, nor is it necessary to extract the whole internal directory of files back to disk. Just open the package, edit and save back as an updated package. To complete the changes in fullest, AVE will take care of updating manifest file to reflect updated OSD files and also making MSI file up-to-date - or generating completely new MSI for older packages without one in the source. Edits to a App-V package could not be any easier!

Examine App-V Client data

As industry's first and only tool, AVE is able to open up and display the contents of App-V Client cached settings - or delta - files (also known as PKG files based on their file extension). While so far App-V administrators has been limited to only guess what the running packages have cached on the client - per user or per machine - now you actually can see it! No more blind repairing App-V packages on the client on the hope that problem will go away.


With AVE, you will be able to examine and analyze the root cause since having the full visibility on the client, and then make necessary adjustments to your packages (with AVE, of course!) for good, with no place left for guessing.

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