Installing and managing software over the network

About the new product structure

Under the new structure, each SCO OpenServer product is arranged in the following units:

product: The unit of software that you buy. For example, SCO OpenServer Enterprise System and SCO Advanced File and Print Server are products. Each product has its own version number. A product is composed of one or more ``components'', ``packages'', or ``parcels''.
A patch-product is one or more patches distributed as a product.
component: The smallest unit of software that can stand alone. A component can constitute an entire product, or it can be one of many components in a product, but it cannot be split into smaller units for distribution. Each component has its own version number. A component is organized into a hierarchical tree of ``packages''.
A patch is applied to a component (rather than to a product or package).
package: The smallest unit of software that can be installed or removed. Each package consists either of files or of other packages. A package does not have its own version number; it inherits the version number of its parent component.

In addition to these units, a product might be subdivided into ``parcels''. In a parcel, related software is grouped for convenience. For example, a parcel might contain the documentation packages from several components, making it easier to install or remove all the documentation in a product. A parcel can contain one or more components, packages, or parcels from the product.

The basis of the new product structure is the concept of software storage objects (SSOs), a method for arranging and naming the files in a distribution so that each component starts out as a read-only object in a unique directory. Each component is completely contained within an SSO, and each SSO contains only one component. Arranging a product in storage objects makes the following features possible:

support for diskless, small-disk, dataless, and network-client installation and software management
multiple versions of a component loaded; and, for some components, multiple versions runnable
object-oriented software management