14 DAY TRIAL // While Microsoft has missed the initially announced deadline for making the Windows 7 vendor data available through the Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5, the company promises that the information is coming. The software giant was planning to integrate vendor data associated with the latest iteration of Windows by mid-December 2009. It’s now December 23rd, with Christmas just a couple of days away and ACT has not evolved to the same level as the Compatibility Center and the Application Compatibility List for IT professionals (available for download).
At this point in time, customers can access information of the hardware products and software solutions compatible with Windows 7 through the company’s Compatibility Center and the List for IT pros. While ACT shares the same database as the previously mentioned resources, fact is that the data needs to be adapted, and Microsoft is not quite there yet. Chris Jackson, an architect and the technical lead for the Microsoft Windows Application Experience SWAT Team, based in Chicago, reveals that the biggest challenge is to get the data ready for the Application Compatibility Toolkit.
“First, the App ID has to be translated. The 3 live services all use a new algorithm for determining an application ID. ACT hopes to transition to use this new algorithm in the next version, but it’s one of those “running in place” changes where, after spending a lot of time and money, the end result looks identical to the user, so it’s difficult to justify rushing the transition (particularly since invalidating an existing inventory full of old App IDs is a terrible idea, so the application will need to support both old and new, and be able to differentiate between them),” Jackson said.
“That translation needs to be automated so it can run in perpetuity, and that process has to be build. Then, the web service that feeds ACT is the old version (v1) while the others are using a much newer version (v4), so the old web service interface has to be modified to leverage the new database feeding it. So, there are two feats of engineering that need to be implemented, tested, and proven at scale,” he added.
Microsoft continues to work on integrating the vendor compatibility data for Windows 7 into ACT 5.5, according to Jackson, and the company is pushing to have it ready by the end of this year. Still, the possibility exists that the holidays as well as the winter season could interfere with the data integration, and that customers will only be able to leverage and update ACT 5.5 in the coming year.
Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5 is available for download here.