About Application Isolation Wizard

AdminStudio 2023 | 25.0 | Application Isolation Wizard

Edition:Application Isolation Wizard is included with AdminStudio Professional and Enterprise Editions.

Application isolation is one solution to component versioning conflicts, commonly known as “DLL Hell.” Isolation reduces versioning conflicts by modifying an application so it always loads the versions of components—such as DLLs—with which it was originally developed and tested. This is accomplished by providing DLLs and other shared components for specific applications, and placing information traditionally stored in the registry into other files that specify the locations of these isolated components. Application isolation provides increased stability and reliability for applications because they are unaffected by changes caused by installation and ongoing maintenance of other applications on the system.

Depending on the isolation method used in the Application Isolation Wizard, you can partially or totally isolate an application. When using assemblies and manifests to isolate applications for Windows XP systems, the assemblies can be updated following deployment without necessitating application reinstallation.

Reasons to Isolate Applications

You would want to isolate an application if:

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You want to resolve incompatibilities between different versions of shared components.

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You want to reduce the complexity of the installation by storing COM activation data in a manifest instead of the registry.

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You want to insulate the application from changes to shared components.

Tip:Following isolation, you can use the Dynamic Dependency Scanner in InstallShield Editor to verify isolated files are loaded from a different directory.

Reasons Not to Isolate an Application

You would not want to isolate an application if, following application isolation, you discover that the application no longer works because of an internal dependency on a component that has been moved during the isolation process.