InstallAware

I am evaluating InstallAware and I like the software. I have been using Wise earlier, but want to change because of the limitations in Wise.

I have some question about InstallAware:

Our software depend on installed accounting software on the computer/server. Can this software read registry and install certain files depending of the result it finds? Can I build and dropdown listbox with the result? This also depends on choosen language.
We use MS SQL Server. I want the user to either select SQL Instance or create a new one with their own name and password. How do I do this in InstallAware?
Some of our customers have already SQL Installed. Can the software find version number of the instance and ask to upgrade this to SQL 2008 Express?
We have several languages of our software, but even if I choose Norwegian in available languages, the dialogs still be in English.

Dear Jan,

All that is definitely possible with InstallAware.

InstallAware has built in commands for writing and reading registry values. You can control the flow of your installer (using MSIcode) based on the result from the registry read. You can also display the results in a listbox.
InstallAware also ships with plugins for working with MSSQL. You can use these plugins to control and manipulate the MS SQL server installed on the target machine (you can also run sql scripts). Furthermore, MS SQL can be selected as a pre-requisite, which means that InstallAware will automatically check if the proper version of MS SQL is installed, and if it is not, the setup will install it.
In order to translate your software, you will need to use the localization wizard. Note that only the Official dialog theme is fully and automatically translatable with InstallAware. To get started with this wizard (and with InstallAware in general) please read the associated F1 help file (press F1 anywhere in InstallAware and search for 'Localization Wizard'). This article will explain how this is done step by step.

Good luck - enjoy InstallAware!

Thank you for the answer.

Have you some code examples how to build up a drop down list with values? I tried to read in the help documents, but could not find anything.
Do you also have some examples of how I make a dialog to set up a new SQL instance, and how I can upgrade an instance with InstallAware?

I can now find the version number of a SQL instanse, but I am not sure how to ask the user to upgrade the instance to 2008 SQL Express.

Regards,
Jan Tore

Hey Jan,

Here is a tutorial on how to create dialogs in InstallAware:
http://www.installaware.com/basic_dialog.pdf

Specifically, in your dialog create a ComboBox item. Set its Items property to $ITEMS$.
Then, in your script, before displaying the dialog, set the $ITEMS$ variable to the items you wish to display, separated by $NEWLINE$.
For example, to show the items Jan and Aviv, use:
"Set Variable $ITEMS$ to Jan$NEWLINE$AVIV"
You can also populate the ComboBox in runtime by simply setting the $ITEMS$ variable to the result returned from the MS SQL Instances command (luckily enough the command returns a $NEWLINE$ delimited list of the instances, which is exactly what we need to populate the ComboBox!).

To create an instance you would have to use the command line utilities that ship with MS SQL as InstallAware can only create a DB of absent but not an instance. Same goes for upgrading your instances.

Hi again

I found out of the problem with combobox.

But, when I see the Norwegian translation of the Official theme, this translation is very bad and several texts are not translated. I see the same is for both Swedish and Danish. Its probably the same for Dutch, but I can't read that language.
Is this only in this demo version or must we do a big job doing correct translation?
As it is now, we need to check all the texts and it becomes a big job that we may need to consider other solutions, even though I like InstallAware very much.

Both Wise and InstallShield have much better translation in their systems.

Dear Jan,

The Official theme dialogs should be fully translatable - are you sure that you are using the correct theme?

Hi again,

I think there where something with my testing. When I reinstalled on my server, the translation was better, but several texts is not good Norwegian. I can retranslate some of the texts and send the result to you, if you want it?

Dear Jan,

What steps are you taking to translate your dialogs? Are you following the Localization Wizard guide in the F1 help files?

Dear Jan,

What steps are you taking to translate your dialogs? Are you following the Localization Wizard guide in the F1 help files?