NGWS SDK Documentation  

This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.
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Personal Tier Manifests

Personal Tier supports application installation using OSD manifests. For more information about this format, see the document located at http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-OSD.html. The default Personal Tier manifest name will be myweb.osd. OSD manifests support an IMPLEMENTATION element that allows a manifest to define varying versions of specific software resources. For example, a developer could define in the manifest that a resource exists in both native Win32 and Personal Tier versions.

A minimal manifest might like something like the following:

<SOFTPKG NAME="com.microsoft.www.money" VERSION="1,0,0,0">
<TITLE>Microsoft Money</TITLE>
<ABSTRACT>Microsoft Money for MyWeb</ABSTRACT>
<LICENSE href="http://www.microsoft.com/money/license.html" />
    
<IMPLEMENTATION>
<CODEBASE 
href="http://www.microsoft.com./money/money.cab" />
</IMPLEMENTATION>
</SOFTPKG>

There are several other optional elements that can be used to provide information to a potential consumer of the application. For example, OSD has a DISKSPACE element that details how much disk storage is required for the application once it is downloaded from its CAB file.

For security purposes, CODEBASE and DEPENDENCY elements must originate from the same host as the manifest.

Personal Tier supports the following OSD attributes. Elements in italics are extensions to the OSD format supplied by Personal Tier.

Element Description
SOFTPKG The top-level OSD element.
IMPLEMENTATION OSD implementation element.
CODEBASE The CAB file for the Personal Tier application.
TITLE The friendly application name.
VERSION The application version.
ABSTRACT The description of the application.
LICENSE The URL where the license for the application can be found.
SIZE Estimate of how much disk space the application consumes when it is expanded.
AUTHOR The author of the application.
SOURCE The source of the application. This can be left blank, or can provide information on the site from which the application was downloaded.
HELPURL Local or remote URL that provides documentation for the application.
ICONURL Local URL that provides the application image to the administrative UI.
REMOTEICONURL Remote URL that provides the application image for the installation process.
REMOTEHELPURL The remote URL for the application's home page. This is used as the starting point for finding application updates, and the like.
CUSTOMURL An option element that defines URLs to be shown in the Admin UI. This can be used to display alternate entry application entry point to users. Two attributes are included in this element: HREF and DESCRIPTION.
HOMEPAGE Default URL of the local application. This can be helpful to the user if an application has been installed from a page other than the home page.