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How much will this cost?
The schema is being made available to the industry under Royalty Free terms. Tooling and other related products that IBM and
others are offering may have some associated costs. We suggest that you approach the vendors identified
(InstallShield and ZeroG) for more information about these products.
What standards bodies have accepted Solution Installation?
IBM has been working with leading industry vendors like Novell, InstallShield and ZeroG to develop the specifications.
The specifications have been published by W3C to make these available to the Industry on a royalty free license basis.
We are making a call to the Industry to form and participate in a standards workgroup to formalize a standard to address
the needs addressed by these specifications.
How can I take advantage of this new technology against already deployed software applications?
The package schema can declare requirements against the existence of software not installed using SI technology.
The Solution Installation technology provides mechanism for discovering Non-SI installed software.
What specific pain points would the Solution Installation technology address?
Today, each component of a solution has its own way of describing dependencies and capturing the metadata.
This means that when installing a solution made up of multiple components, the amount and quality of information about the
components and its dependencies varies and compromises the chance for a successful installation. In addition,
dependency checking is largely a manual process and knowledge of the environment is often not available or complete —
through the use of standardized packaging and manageability interfaces, customers will be able to clearly identify dependencies
and verify their environments.
What are the plans for IBM brands to adopt Solution Installation technology?
IBM's brands are in various stages of adoption of the technology into their products, so that they can be all packaged and
installed in a consistent way. We anticipate that the brands will be announcing products, as their development plans solidify.
By partnering with the tool vendors like InstallShield & Zero G, IBM is sharing with the rest of the industry the same
technology it is encouraging its own brands to use. We are launching this effort across the industry, based on Open Standards.
We anticipate that the IT industry will see and reap the benefits of the technology soon.
How does this technology work with Rational Clearcase?
Clearcase from Rational automates Software Change Management processes in the production and modification of files, directories,
components, and systems. By providing a way to capture dependency information in an open industry format and providing a framework
to automatically process the same during installation, Solution Installation technology enhances the operational capabilities of
Clearcase.
Can the newly announced technology be used to package software in the Java development environment — files like EARs and JARs, etc.?
Yes. The architecture is agnostic to the type of files one would like to package. You can use the Solution Installation technology to package Java files and install them on the target platforms.
How does Solution Installation differ from RPM?
Solution Installation can invoke any Native Installer like RPM. The Solution Installation technology has built-in actions for
deploying native installers like RPM, InstallShield for Multi Platform (ISMP), and Microsoft installer (MSI).
How does Solution Installation differ from Microsoft's DSI?
Microsoft's Systems Definition Model (SDM) addresses the consistent packaging and distribution of software, as part
of their Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI). DSI today focuses on packaging and distributing the operating system and
associated files, primarily in the windows environment.
IBM's initiative is much broader than that. By embracing the industry standards where they exist (XML) for packaging the files,
adopting a common set of specifications in collaboration with industry leaders like InstallShield, Novell and ZeroG, and intending
to take the specifications to the appropriate standards bodies, IBM is making a call to the Industry to come and embrace the
open-standard format for packaging & installation of components.
In addition, IBM's efforts go beyond just the Operating systems as the target platform. The Solution Installation technology for
Autonomic Computing is applicable for a variety of target platforms including operating systems, databases and application servers.
How does Solution Installation differ from Shell scripts?
Shell scripts can be used to deploy software, but are limited by their platform-specific nature and lack of encapsulation.
Solution Installation allows you to create software packages which contain all of the files necessary to install and which declare
the steps necessary to deploy in a platform-independent XML schema. In addition, Solution Installation provides an action for
invoking external commands like a batch file or shell script.
What are the hardware/software requirements for Solution Installation Technology?
Solution Installation requires approximately 70MB of disk space on the target machine over and above the deployed application.
This is a one time allocation of space for the Solution Installation runtime that will be used by all products deploying via SI.
Typical usage of Solution Installation requires approximately 256 megabytes of RAM.
Can existing Tivoli products use packages created using this new technology?
Yes, this standard has no impact on Tivoli products such as Tivoli Configuration Manager or Tivoli Provisioning Manager.
These products transport and leverage installation packages today as part of their ability to deploy and manage an entire system
or environment, and installations developed with this technology would be completely compatible with Tivoli solutions.
How do we get support for the Solution Installation technology?
The Solution Installation technology is being made available through our partners — InstallShield and ZeroG.
For those customers who get these technologies through these partners, they will get support through these partners.
Those who are interested in procuring the SI technology, and use this natively in their environment, are encouraged to contact
their IBM representative.
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