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A short time back I described how to get Inmagic WebPublisher 10 running on IIS 7 in Windows Vista. Everything I said there still holds true, but now I must warn you about Vista virtualization.

Webpublisher accesses parts of the file system and registry that are now locked in Windows Vista, and is therefore subject to Vista's answer to backwards compatibility for legacy applications.

If a legacy application such as Webpublisher tries to access protected portions of the file system and registry without the right permissions, Vista's UAC (user account control) virtualization services silently and automatically redirect read/write operations to unprotected user-specific locations.

For instance, say Webpublisher wants to write the location of a textbase to dbtwpub.ini located at:

%Program Files%\Inmagic\WebPubPro\dbtwpub.ini

Vista detects that Webpublisher does not have permission to save to that location and copies the file to:

%Users%\<your account>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Inmagic\WebPubPro\dbtwpub.ini

Subsequent read/write operations access the VirtualStore version of the file, even though Webpublisher will still think it is accessing the Program Files directory. Poor deluded Webpublisher.

So now the textbase location additions are tied to your user account, and worse, some applications will see the virtual file, while others see the original. And they're not synced.

So like, today I edited dbtwpub.ini with Notepad. Hours later I opened it with UltraEdit. And blinked about 14 times at the complete disappearance of the textbase locations I could have sworn I added. But Webpublisher still worked, searching textbases it couldn't possibly know the locations to. Huh?

Turns out Notepad sees the VirtualStore version, like WebPublisher, but UltraEdit sees the original version.

Yikes. Looks like Inmagic has their work cut out for them next version. And I'd better start reading up on Vista UAC. 

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