System and Method for Automating Installation and Updating of Third Party Software

• US 20120246630A1
• Filed: 03/23/2012
• Published: 09/27/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 03/23/2011
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Secure By Design, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Secure By Design
• Inventors: Kuzins, Sascha, Swieskowski, Patrick
• Application Number:
  US13/428,789
• Publication Number:
  US 20120246630A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/169
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/61 Installation

Abstract

A software application installation system facilitates automatic installation and/or updating of software applications without requiring a user to have any specific knowledge of the configuration of the computer system upon which the software application is to be installed and/or updated. The software applications to be installed may be supplied by third party providers. The installation is based on automatically derived knowledge of the computer system on which the software applications are to be installed. The software applications may be installed automatically using a standardized user interface (UI), and/or without requiring substantial user input.

Claims

1. A method for automatically installing a software application component on a computer, the method comprising:

sending from a computer an identification of a first software application component to be installed on the computer;

receiving, at the computer;

a bootstrap component comprising a key corresponding to the first software application;

at the direction of the bootstrap component, a main program;

software installation instructions for installing the software application component on the computer; and

at the direction of the main program operating based on the software installation instructions, the first software application component, and

identifying, at the computer by the main program a version of the first software application component, if the first software application component is installed on the computer; and

installing on the computer, at the direction of the main program operating based on the software installation instructions and the identified version, the first software application component.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the software installation instructions comprise a Uniform Resource Locator (URL).

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the URL is a URL expression comprising instructions to retrieve data from other URLs.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the URL expression comprises primitives to send HTTP requests and manipulate a response.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising, executing instructions including primitives to access and manipulate data of the version of the software application component installed on the computer.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

traversing each of a plurality of programs to be installed using the main program; and

for each traversed program,

retrieving configuration information;

retrieving URL expression from the configuration information; and

retrieving a program corresponding to the URL expression; and

storing the program in temporary file.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising:

creating a copy of the main program; and

embedding offline installation instructions and the temporary file in the copy of the main program.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the installation instructions comprise a plurality of configurations for the application component.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising selecting one of the plurality of configurations based on an algorithm executed by the main program.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the algorithm selects the one of the plurality of configurations based on one or more of operating system version, operating system language, machine processor architecture, service pacts, and command line parameters.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising creating a tree representation of user interface elements.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising identifying erroneous user interface states by matching user interface states associated with the first software application component with the tree representation of user interface elements.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising sending identified erroneous user interface states to a server for inspection.

14. A method for providing installation software to a computer, the method comprising:

receiving at a computer server an identification of a first software application component to be installed on a client computer;

sending, by the computer server;

a bootstrap component comprising a key corresponding to the first software application component;

a main program configured to identify a version of the first software application component, if the first software application component is installed on the client computer;

software installation instructions for installing the software application component on the client computer; and

the first software application component.

15. A system for installing software on a computer, the system comprising:

one or more client computers; and

one or more computer servers, the computer servers configured to perform the operations of;

receiving an identification of a first software application component to be installed on the one or more client computers; and

sending;

a bootstrap component comprising a key corresponding to the first software application;

a main program configured to identify a version of the first software application component, if the first software application component is installed on the one or more client computers;

software installation instructions for installing the software application component on the one or more client computers; and

the first software application component.