Symantec Workspace Streaming 6.1 SDK is Now Available

A month or two ago, Symantec quietly released an SDK for Workspace Streaming 6.1. You might be tempted to immediately skip anything that says SDK, but this is a great tool for anyone who uses Workspace Streaming, and is especially important for those integrating Workspace Streaming into a larger automated workflow.

Since the SDK uses WSDL and web services, you don't need to be an advanced programmer to use it (I'm definitely not!). You can let your development tool do the heavy lifting by generating proxy classes, then you can access the Streaming functionality the same as any other library (you can even rely entirely on intellisense like I do). This is a big change from the days when you needed C or Java experience to write to a product's SDK.

So, what exactly can you do with the SDK? You can assign applications to users, update package values and provisions, view current sessions, generate reports, and about every other task you perform in your day-to-day management. More importantly, you can integrate these tasks into self-service portals, scripts, and workflow tools to save time.

The following steps walk you through getting the SDK downloaded and installed.

Download

1. Browse to http://www.symantec.com/business/endpoint-virtualization-suite
2. Click Trialware.
3. Download the Symantec Workspace Streaming SDK 6.1 and save it on your Streaming Server (in a multi-note environment, save it on the server running the ATWE Console service).

If you are starting with the SDK and don’t yet have Workspace Streaming 6.1 installed (starting with the SDK is pretty hardcore, my kudos to you), you can use this guide: http://www.symantec.com/connect/videos/workspace-streaming-61-evaluators-video (this is a plug for my other article, please vote it up since my boss looks at this)

Install

Installation is easy, extract > run setup.exe > click Next > Finish. The installation requires a server restart. The only confusing part is if you are expecting something to happen after the server restarts, because nothing happens, everything is running in the background ready to be accessed.

To perform a quick test, open your browser to http://[hostname]:9842/websvcs/services/identity?wsdl

You should see a bunch of XML. If you feel tempted to start reading it I suggest closing the browser immediately.

Using the SDK

You can access the SDK using any language or tool that supports WSDL, which I think includes most of them. I use Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition, you can download it for free here: http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/ .

For the programming language, I use the VB.Net because adding semicolons; is confusing. More details on generating proxy classes and performing tasks are in the attached SDK Guide, so I won’t repeat them here.

Now go forth and develop.