Questions regarding patching, updating and UAC

[douR]

I apologize, I meant to post this in your pre-sales forum...

I am interested in trying out your product for deploying two different projects and ran into a number of questions that have tried to answer using your documentation and online resources.

First, let me give you little more background on each project.

.NET Application
The most current application that I am interesting in creating a setup for is a .NET application that uses the Microsoft Enterprise Library (EntLib) version 3.1. The reason that I mention this is that for some of the functionality that I am interested in using, the EntLib requires full trust on both XP and Vista machines.

Originally, I was planning on using ClickOnce to deploy this application but abandoned that due to the per-user install (I have some target PCs where 5 or more users could be using a given machine) along with the issues with renewing Authenticode certificates for ClickOnce applications and the possibility of some customer sites wanting to use Group Policy to push out the install and updates.

Instead, I would like to have a setup application that can perform a per machine install, install the EntLib assemblies to the GAC and can automatically update itself over the internet. All of which appears is possible with your product.

Visual Basic 6 with COM+
I also have an older Visual Basic application where I originally authored the setup using Wise for Visual Studio which was a horrendous experience, is full of too many ICE errors to fix and silently fails when trying to deploy it using group policy.

This application also has a custom update utility that allows me to copy the latest binary from a UNC path along the COM+ Installation MSI file (the application proxy). It then uninstalls the current application proxy and installs the new one. (It does this by running the command line msiexec.exe using credentials that are embedded in the EXE and an administrative account that is installed on the local machine when the initial setup is run.) Not pretty or a best practice, but it works for both PCs that are members of a domain managed using Active Directly and peer-to-peer networks by copying any updates from an UNC.

I am looking for one setup authoring tool that can help me with both of these applications and have downloaded your product along with a competitors in order to evaluate and test both.

Out of the box, I want both projects to use the same update mechanism so all my questions deal with updating an existing application.

1. I am a bit confused when the documentation for User Account Control (UAC) patching mentions that patches needed to be digitally signed. With what? An Authenticode Code Certificate?

2. Is there an API that I can use within my application that checks for an update each time the application starts? Running updates on a schedule is not enough. Even running the updater from a command-line would be fine.

3. Can the updater be run with elevated privileges?

4. Can your updater allow for a credential free upgrade on Vista?
- I have checked your forums, and have not found a definitive yes or no on whether this can be done without the UAC prompt.

5. Does it only work with signed MSI Patches (MSP)?

6. If it is possible, then I realize for the VB6 application I may have to convert the COM+ Installation MSI file into a MSI Patch (MSP) file and in theory I thought this should work.
- Is this a correct assumption? Will this work?
- If I am able to issue a patch this way, and I version the COM+ application. Is the new patch I generate able to remove the settings from the previous version of the COM+ Installation MSI?

7. Is your redistributable build interface capable of importing a MSI? I would need to remotely create the patch for each customer site.

It appears the forum software is truncating my message, so I will create a new post in the presales forum