IA X2 Claim to further compress files 30%. Not seeing it

[spicymikey]

Francesco,

I'm angry because I'm raising a concern and you will not prove it wrong. For anyone who reads this thread I'd love some input. From what I see, you claim on the sales side of this site is JUST NOT TRUE. It's a lie. if you think I'm being a jerk, then prove me wrong and make me apologize.

http://www.installaware.com/web-deploym ... ession.htm

[pro510]

My project went from 377MB down to 298MB when upgraded. It includes .NET 4.5, SQL CE, VC++ 11 runtimes. So we got a 20% improvement.

[spicymikey]

Thanks pro510. That would be great but I saw no change.

Since my last post I reread the sales literature and it talks about using a "decompressor" first. Bam! Could that could be the problem? Is that what you used? Or did you just get this savings "out of the box"?

Thanks again for the input

Mike

[pro510]

My savings were out of the box. I made no changes to the project other than move the compression slider two notches to the right.

However, I am having a problem including .NET 4.5, it doesn't exist in X2. I had to copy across the 4.5 runtimes from IA18 to get it to compile. I am confident that the project in X2 still contains .NET4.5, but there is a remote possibility that my reduced size was because of 4.5 not being included. I will have to do further investigations to verify.

[spicymikey]

Thanks pro510. I'm scratching my head here. I have a large project that includes lots of SQL Server stuff and many other 3rd party MSI's. Out of the box I saw zero difference even after sliding the other two notches to "Best".

I didn't upgrade solely because of the proclaimed new compression algorithms. In fact, I suspected those dramatic size savings were BS when I read the email, given what I know about compression algorithms. But, if its legit, I'd love to take advantage of it.

Let me know if you think the 20% reduction was due to the missing 4.5. If so, then you didn't get any size reduction either. If not, then I must be an idiot and doing something stupid :/

[Edhy]

Hi All,
I understand both position, Francesco and Mike, and sometimes it can be difficult to get a message across for many reasons.

Mike, I don't have the time do do the test Francesco was suggesting with .Net 4.6, but I do use .Net 4.5 and after upgrading one of my script today I noticed that the .Net 4.52 runtime had a size of 271,773KB, after reading your post, I change my compression settings to "Best" and re-build my script and to my surprise, the same .Net 4.52 runtime now has a size of 62,022KB, that a is huge advantage for my end users, see image attached.

For your info, I have not done anything out of the ordinary, just changed the compression ratio to "Best".

[spicymikey]

Wow, I don't understand why it has no effect on my zip files. It's the weirdest thing. I'll have to go back and revisit it after the holidays when I have more time, but thanks a lot for posting your results. It inspires me to dig further.

[spicymikey]

By the way Edhy, I just checked my .net4 files compressed last year with an older IA18 version, and those files are ALREADY at 69000kb.

So, what version were you running before and/or what level of compression were you at before sliding to "Best". You mentioned "default". I see no such designation on the compression window with the slide bar. In IA18 I was at "Best", and now with IA X2 (19) I'm still running at "best". From what I see, there is no compression difference.

[Edhy]

Oh Mike,
One thing that Francesco suggested me was to uncheck all my runtimes, remove any old runtime script that may have been left orphaned when unchecking the runtimes from the Designer IDE, then save my script and re-check the runtimes I needed.
Building process took a bit longer, but I only build my Web Media Block once and transfer then to my website for future installations, so at this rate, it is well worth to spend the time and re-build the runtimes.

Good luck!!! I know that this sort of issues can be frustrating sometimes, but as a community, we are all in this together with InstallAware and they are always looking to provide us with the best tool possible based on current technology. In the next couple of months I have to start testing deployment for MS SQL Server Express 2014 and I hope that this one can take advantage of current compression features.

[spicymikey]

That might make the difference my friend. I don't use any IA runtimes. I could see why that would matter for files already compressed. I wasn't expecting to see them recompress the SQL Server 2012 Express runtime further than it already is compressed after getting clarification from Francesco on that needed step. BUT, I am not seeing extra compression on ANYTHING. I have some empty starter MDF and LDF files. They have lots of "air" in them. if I compress using the option two notches to the left of "best", I get a file of 1,455kb. if I use "Best" I get a file the same size. My tests show that the two newest settings make no difference.

So I'm still curious what you mean by "default" compression. Again, there is no such designation in IA 18 or X2. What did you go FROM and TO to see the dramatic 270kb to 69kb reduction?

Thanks
Mike

[Edhy]

Hi Mike,
I went from IA 18 to X2.
By default compression I meant what I had before upgrading to X2, see picture and sorry for the confusion.

>> I don't use any IA runtimes.
Then that is definately a problem, because IA will not compress an already compressed setup or msi. IA, will re-compress or re-build the Web Media Blocks you select from their Runtime list as long as you have them mark as "Build". AFAIK, one of the advantages of using IA runtimes is the fact that they will uncompress and then recompress the runtimes using 7zip compression to get the best ratio possible based on your environment. We have similar specs, I also have 12GB RAM and 6 core CPU with Hyperthread.

[spicymikey]

Thanks again. I appreciate your time.

Yes, I was initially not aware the compression improvements would ONLY work if you were working from IA's runtimes. That was something they failed to state in the promo email sent out. In retrospect it makes sense. But, as I said, I am still not seeing any compression improvements on some files that are not already compressed. They are NOT IA runtimes, but they are also not compressed, so I expected something to be better.

Bottom line; buyer beware on this selling point. It only seems to make a difference if you are using IA's runtimes. Any third party runtimes or partner products you are shipping (we have several) or anything related to Microsoft that you take straight from their servers, will not improve.

FYI: We do not ship .NET any longer as you seem to still be doing. Windows 7 and greater (which we only support now) will auto sense when .NET is being called for use and direct the customer to download it immediately and directly from MSFT. Saves on bandwidth with your deployment servers and reduces the size of your setup package.

Thanks again!

[Edhy]

Hi Mark,

Bottom line; buyer beware on this selling point. It only seems to make a difference if you are using IA's runtimes. Any third party runtimes or partner products you are shipping (we have several) or anything related to Microsoft that you take straight from their servers, will not improve.

Are you aware of the IA "Setup Decompressor" tool? if not look at it in the help file for more detail or http://www.installaware.com/web-deployment-repack-databases.htm, but basically with this tool you can manually decompress any MSI, MSP or EXE file and re-compress it with IA compression algorithm to gain more compression ratio.

[spicymikey]

Yes I am aware of it but decompressing someone elses MSI and rebuilding it concerns me, plus most are signed and encrypted. I question how well that would work and never tried it. Maybe we will spend some time trying that and see if it works. Again, as I mentioned, I have uncompressed files that did not show any improvement. It's a mystery