System and method for repairing a damaged application program

• US 6,397,381 B1
• Filed: 09/21/1998
• Issued: 05/28/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 09/21/1998
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Parulekar, Chetan A., McKinnis, David R., Ferrier, Tracy D., Haar, Malcolm S., Chamberlain, Benjamin, Gonzalez, David E., Delo, John C.
• Primary Examiner(s): DAM, TUAN QUANG
• Application Number:
  US09/158,126
• Time in Patent Office: 1,345 Days
• Field of Search: 717/11 707/10,202,204 709/221,222,217,203 713/100 714/48,53,54,5,15,2,18
• US Class Current: 717/174
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/61 Installation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99953 Recoverability

Abstract

A system and method for providing the ability to repair an installed application program if a resource needed by the application program becomes inadvertently deleted or otherwise unavailable to the application program. Briefly described, the present invention makes possible a system for verifying the existence of a resource needed to support a feature of the application program. The system may respond to a request from the application program to make use of the resource by first verifying the existence of the resource at an expected location. If the resource does not exist at the expected location, rather than returning an error to the application program, the system initiates an installation procedure for restoring the missing resource without interrupting the normal operation of the application program.

Claims

1. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for repairing an application program that has become damaged, which when executed perform steps comprising:

(a) verifying that a resource operative to provide functionality to the application program is available at an expected location to the application program;

(b) in response to a positive verification of the availability of the resource to the application program, passing an existence verification to the application program; and

(c) in response to a failure to verify the availability of the resource to the application program at the expected location, automatically initiating an installation procedure without manual termination of the application program to make the resource available to the application program at the expected location.

2. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein:

the expected location of the resource is described by a resource path; and

the existence verification comprises the resource path.

3. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the step of verifying the availability of the resource occurs in response to an indication by the application program that the resource is needed by the application program.

4. The computer-readable medium of claim 3, wherein the indication comprises a request for the resource path to the resource.

5. The computer-readable medium of claim 4, wherein the request for the resource path includes a parameter identifying the resource.

6. The computer-readable medium of claim 5, wherein the resource path is maintained in a registration database, and the resource path is associated with the parameter identifying the resource.

7. The computer-readable medium of claim 6, wherein the step of verifying the availability of the resource includes:

receiving the request for the resource path to the resource, the request including the parameter identifying the resource;

accessing the registration database to retrieve the resource path associated with the parameter; and

attempting to access the resource at the expected location described by the resource path.

8. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the step of verifying the availability of the resource occurs in a background process while the application program awaits the result of the verification.

9. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for verifying that a resource needed by an application program is available, which when executed perform steps comprising:

(a) receiving a resource identifier comprising at least one argument from the application program, the resource identifier being associated with the resource needed by the application program, the resource being operative to support functionality of a portion of the application program;

(b) accessing a database based on the resource identifier to retrieve an expected location of the resource;

(c) verifying the existence of the resource at the expected location; and

(d) in response to the verification of the existence of the resource at the expected location, passing the expected location to the application program.

10. The computer-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the resource identifier comprises a component code which uniquely identifies the resource needed by the application program.

11. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the resource identifier further comprises a feature identifier which identifies the portion of the application program.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the step of receiving the resource identifier includes receiving a request for the expected location of the resource, the request having the resource identifier as a parameter.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the step of accessing the database to identify the expected location of the resource includes searching through entries within the database for an entry having as a first field the resource identifier, the first field being associated with an expected resource path, the resource path being operative to identify the expected location.

14. In a computer system having an application program, the application program having a feature, the feature comprising a component, the component having a key file which supports the feature of the application program, a method for repairing the application program if the key file becomes unavailable to the application program, comprising the steps of:

(a) receiving from the application program a request for a path to the key file;

(b) identifying an expected location for the key file on the computer system, the expected location being described by a keypath;

(c) attempting to verify the existence of the key file at the expected location on the computer system; and

(d) in response to a failure to verify the existence of the key file at the expected location, automatically initiating an installation of the key file to the expected location on the computer system without manual termination of the application program.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising the step of:

(e) in response to a positive verification of the existence of the key file at the expected location, issuing to the application program the keypath to the key file.

16. A method of communicating between an installer application and an application program in a multiprocessing computer system, comprising the steps of:

(a) receiving from the application program at the installer application a provide component call including a component identifier, the component identifier being related to a key file which supports a feature of the application program;

(b) in response to the provide component call, determining if the key file related to the component identifier exists at an expected location;

(c) in response to a failure to determine that the key file exists at the expected location, automatically initiating an installation of the key file to the expected location without manual termination of the application program; and

(d) when the key file is installed at the expected location, returning from the installer application to the application program a path to the expected location.

17. The method of claim 16, further including, prior to the step of determining if the key file exists, the step of:

determining if the key file has been installed by querying a registration database for the existence of an entry containing a keypath identifying the expected location of the key file.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the step of determining if the key file has been installed includes issuing to the installer application a use feature call having a plurality of call parameters comprising the product identifier and a feature identifier, the use feature call being operative to cause the application program to query the registration database for the keypath, and to generate an indication that the entry for the keypath does not exist within the registration database when the keypath does not exist within the registration database.

19. The method of claim 17, further including the step of:

If the entry for the keypath does not exist within the registration database, initiating the installation of the key file to the multiprocessing computer system.

20. The method of claim 16, wherein the step of initiating the installation of the key file includes issuing to the installer application a configure feature call having as a parameter a feature identifier identifying the feature of the application program, the configure feature call being operative to initiate the installation of the key file from a source location to the expected location.

21. The method of claim 16, wherein the step of returning the path includes issuing to the installer application a get component path call having as a parameter the component identifier, the get component path call being operative to cause the installer application to query a registration database for the expected location of the key file and to return to the application program the expected location of the key file.

22. A computer-readable medium having a computer-executable software module for detecting that a key file is missing and for installing the missing key file, comprising:

(a) component-request functionality for receiving, from an application program, a request for a location of the key file, the key file being associated with a component and operative to provide functionality to a feature of an application program, the component being associated with the feature;

(b) key-file existence checking functionality for querying a registration database to retrieve a resource path, the resource path identifying the location of the key file, and further for accessing the location identified by the resource path to ascertain the existence of the key file; and

(c) installation functionality for initiating an installation of the key file to the location identified by the resource path,

whereby the installation functionality automatically initiates the installation of the key file to the location identified by the resource path in response to a determination by the key-file existence checking functionality that the key file does not exist at the location identified by the resource path and without manual termination of the application program.