What is the difference between the different export options?
In Custom Updates Publishing Tool (CUPT) there were two export options, now with System Center Updates Publisher (SCUP) you have three. Today I’m here to tell you what the difference is between all of them.
Export Option 1
First is the option “Export selected updates to a cabinet file that can be imported by other publishers” in SCUP. This is the exact same option as “Export a cabinet file that can be imported by other publishing tools” in CUPT. This option was designed to be used to export your selected updates to a cab file. This cab file then can be imported into any other publishing tool. This is a great option if you have more than one user who authors a single update. For example you might have a marketing team start creating the update and entering information such as title, description, vendor and product. Once the marketing team is done they can export the update and hand off to the developer of the update to import into their SCUP/CUPT and fill out the detection rules.
One thing to note here is what I mean by selected updates. There are only a few ways to select an update, below is a list.
- Select the root node, which selects all updates
- Select a single vendor node, which selects all updates under that vendor
- Select a single product node, which selects all updates under that product
- Select one or more updates under a single product node
As you see there is no way to pick and choose across different vendors or products without selecting them all, that is where option 3 comes in.
Export Option 2
The second option is called “Export selected updates to a test catalog XML file and supporting scan file for testing” in SCUP. The corresponding option in CUPT is called “Export a test catalog XML file and supporting scan files for testing”. This is the “Export for Test” option when you want to test your selected update’s Software Distribution Package (SDP) before releasing to the public or your corporate environment. This option will create SDP XML without CAB’ing. Specifically this option exports the raw SDP XML into a user specified folder along with RunScan.cmd and executable to test your updates. All you have to do at that point is double click on “RunScan.cmd” which will then run the test scan engine and report your results in the form of “TestResults.xml”. This results file along with the scan engine log can be used to verify or troubleshoot your update SDP.
Export Option 3 (SCUP only)
The third export option is called “Export all updates in the update publisher database that have the publish flag set” and can only be found in SCUP. This option was originally inside the Publish Wizard in CUPT but was moved to the Export Wizard in the new release. The primarily difference versus the first two options is that it exports only those updates which are flagged (Publish Flag set). This can span across multiple vendor and product nodes unlike the two above selecting options. The other main difference is that this option also produces a signature file (XML) that is used in conjunction with the CAB when publishing online. This signature file stores when the catalog was created and can be consumed by SCUP/CUPT subscribed catalogs feature. The subscribed catalogs feature is used to keep a list of catalogs you want to be alerted to when they are updated. Independent Software Vendors and Line of Business developers should use this option when they want to create a final catalog that is to be consumed by their customers.
