Managed and Unmanged Solution

A solution is a bucket where all the customization components of a particular project are stored. Creating a solution helps in moving these components from one environment to another. There are three different types of solutions: default, managed and unmanaged.

• Default Solution. The out-of-the-box Microsoft Dynamics CRM software as well as the pre-deployment customizations are part of the default solution. You can access a default solution by navigating to Settings, Customizations, and Customize the system:
• Unmanaged Solution. The beginning state of solution is the unmanaged solution state. During this phase, you can add, edit, update, remove, delete, and test any of the components of the solution. You also have the ability to create restrictions on the components within the solution. Any number of these unmanaged customized solution components can be associated with any number of unmanaged solutions.
• Managed Solution. A managed solution is a finalized solution that can be distributed and installed. They are created by exporting an unmanaged solution by setting restrictions to prevent any further customizations. They are installed in addition to the system solution. They can also be layered on top of other managed solutions as well. The unrestricted components of the solution are still customizable.
• Other way of understanding - Unmanaged solution gives us way to create  new , add existing components for customization .Once all the customization is done we can export our solution in managed or unmaneged state.
  Managed solution can be uninstall very easily but there is no direct way to uninstall unmanged solution. Also data will be delete while deleting unmanged solution.
  
  Managed solution is good when you are a software vendor but if you are following agile method where you develope and publish then you can use unmanged solution
  
  Imp - A manged solution can be updated with the same publisher. Suppose we developed a manged solution  and imported in QA envirnoment .
  Imp2- If we imported using manged solution then we cant access secure configuration of plugin.
• Problem with manged and unmanged
• What will you do if half functionality of your exported solution is not working ?
  Ans- 1. we can separate various enchancement is separate solutions in an attempt to make each separate solution smaller and increase the chances of smaller solutions importing rather than one big one.
  2.Need  to see weather we forgot to apply any enchancement  in solution.
  3,
• Some common error while importing
  -- Time out error -
  --Sql error while importing solution -- may we have done datatype mismatch in sql  table .
  -- Option set Id cannot be changed - If we change the option set  from entity to global entity
  it may give error in solution export .
  -- 
• Error while Importing a solution in CRM 2011 – The solution file is invalid. The compressed file must contain the following files at its root: solution.xml, customizations.xml, and [Content_Types].xml---The problem was I was zipping up the solution folder, this then creates a zip file with a folder at the root and then the three solution files
  Hosk Solution
  [Content Types].xml,solution.xml customizations.xml
   What you have to do is select the three xml files and then zip them up.  This then doesn’t create the root folder.