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• December 31, 2002 •
This week, Microsoft released Beta 2 of the Application Compatibility Analyzer. The Microsoft Application Compatibility Analyzer gathers application inventory information from network computers and compiles this data into reports showing the application compatibility status by computer, department, or application. The tool solves many problems encountered during the early phases of software deployment.
With the Microsoft Application Compatibility Analyzer, application inventories are automated and can be completed quickly. The data collection portion of the tool is highly configurable via command line switches and can be distributed to client computers through a variety of methods (launched from a network file share, through logon scripts or specific user actions). The collection process typically takes only 1-2 minutes per computer, though computers with many applications may take longer.
The tool consists of two separate pieces:
Collector tool
The Collector tool represents the client portion of the Microsoft Application Compatibility Analyzer. It is a command line tool that accepts a number of switches to modify its behavior during the collection process. The Collector can be distributed through a wide variety of methods, configured to run on specific computers, and even for individual users. The Collector will identify every application on each targeted computer (and on mapped network drives if that option is specified) that the current user has access to. Based on this limitation, for instance, the time required to gather an inventory for every user and computer will be defined by the period of time required to ensure that every user has logged on to their computer at least once and initiated the Collector.
Analyzer tool
The Analyzer tool provides a graphical interface to the data generated by the Collector. A list of applications present in a network is valuable, but Analyzer takes that further by comparing the list of applications with application compatibility data stored in an online compatibility database. Information in that database has been provided by data from the Windows Catalog, Microsoft internal testing, and from outside parties. The more often this database is used and updated, the more complete the listings will become.
Note that the online compatibility database is only minimally populated for this beta release, but is constantly being expanded.
The Collector (client-side) application can be run on the following platforms:
The Analyzer application is supported on the following platforms:
Download [6.85 MB] Microsoft Application Compatibility Analyzer
