METHOD FOR CATEGORIZING AND INSTALLING SELECTED SOFTWARE COMPONENTS

A generic way of publishing globally available functionality that can be shared across applications. Utilizing an Installer Registry, an Installer, Descriptors and a Publish Component Table, related components can be retrieved using an qualifier. A request for a listing of related components, which includes a qualifier, is received from an application. The installer retrieves all the related components, matching the qualifier, from the Publish Component Table. The installer then retrieves the features associated with the components and presents the list of components to the application. The application then selects a specific component and the installer then determines the product associated with the selected component by using the feature and component information retrieved from the Publish Component Table. Once the product information is retrieved, the present invention searches the Installer Registry, using the product, feature and component information as a token, and returns a keypath for that token. If the keypath does not exist, the Installer installs the feature and associated component and then returns the keypath of the installed component.