If you need additional provisioning functionality not provided
with Microsoft Provisioning System, you can create custom providers
and namespaces to address those provisioning requirements.
You have the following options:
If your provisioning requirements include functionality that is
not supported by the standard providers included with Microsoft
Provisioning Framework (MPF), you can implement your own or other
custom providers for MPF. You can write custom providers in
Microsoft Visual C++, Microsoft Visual Basic, or another
language.
For MPF to recognize a custom provider and its procedures, you must create a corresponding namespace
XML file and register it in the configuration database. The configuration database
contains both namespace definitions for providers and run-time
parameters for provisioning components. The Microsoft Provisioning
Framework Software Development Kit (SDK) and its documentation
support the development of a custom provider and the associated
namespace using one of the following methods:
Develop a provider using Visual C++ or Visual Basic
Visual C++ and Visual Basic automatically generate a namespace
file called ProjectName.xml that can be added to MPF.
Note
To create this ProjectName.xml, you must have the
Microsoft Provisioning Framework Software Development Kit (SDK)
installed.
Develop a provider using another platform
To develop a custom provider for MPF on a platform other than
Visual C++ or Visual Basic, you must first create a COM+ object
that defines and implements the interfaces and procedures required
to run the provider in MPF. You can use the format described in the
Microsoft Provisioning Framework SDK to manually create a namespace
file for the provider.
After you create and test the XML of the namespace file, you
must register it in the configuration database in order for MPF to
recognize it.. Registration is automatic when you use Provisioning Manager to import the namespace. You can
also use ProvNamespace.exe to register a namespace from the command
line.
Not all namespaces require a provider. Some namespaces provide
the business logic that is necessary to invoke the lower-level
procedures that are required to communicate with a provider. To
create this type of namespace, you use the same method you use to
create a provider namespace; that is, you create a namespace XML
file and register it in the configuration database.
The custom namespaces you implement can be either new namespaces
or modifications of existing namespaces. Some MPF namespaces are
read-only namespaces and cannot be modified. Read-only namespaces,
which are indicated by the red highlighting for the namespace in
the console tree, are critical to the operation of MPF.
Only registered namespaces are valid. After creating a custom
namespace, use the provnamespace command-line utility to register
the namespace in Provisioning Manager. If you modify an existing
namespace, you must remove the old namespace. You must import the
modified namespace in order to register it.
The Microsoft Provisioning Framework Software Development Kit
(SDK) contains additional resources to help you develop providers
and namespaces. For more information on the SDK and how to use it,
see Microsoft Provisioning Framework SDK and
documentation.