Install and Run IBM Rational Application Developer V7.5 as a Non-Administrator

Many companies require their employees to run software as non-administrator users. This can be problematic for developers and architects who install their own software tools if they need to install the software using an administrator ID. For example, say you are at a company that has Windows XP desktop standard settings that prevent the typical user from installing software that requires registry access. You want to install software such as Rational Application Developer V7.5, which has an installer that writes to the Windows XP registry, so you need to switch your permissions to that of an administrator user before installing the software. Then, after installation completes, you must switch back to a non-administrator user ID. The permissions switch can cause issues in your test environment. In a similar situation, I had to change permissions manually on the various directories of the application server in the test environment to allow a regular user to start up the application server test environment inside Rational Application Developer. You can avoid the hassle of changing file system permissions for IBM Rational Application Developer by learning how to install it as a non-administrative user, using IBM Installation Manager and an installation script.

Note that I use a Windows XP desktop for the example installation.