InstallAware

I just bought Studio 8. I am trying to learn the best way to do things, but would like a nudge in the right direction. I want:
- a VERY SIMPLE installer. My customers are not known for computer savvy.
- An automatic (or very nearly so) 'check for updates' functionality to update my app regularly.

My app is pretty simple, containing two executables, a database file, some dlls, and a bunch of help files. Is it true that the best way for me to accomplish my goals is to deploy my app as a web build? Anything else to know here in order to get this going? I'd like to do it as a single standalone setup file. Can this be done with the web build?

The patching aspect of this is also confusing to me. I want to be absolutely sure that the database file (which is dynamic on the customer's computer) is not touched by the update process. The only things that will generally be touched are the executables and dlls. If I need to update the database file I can write an updater to run appropriate schema modification scripts. I can't live with the file getting corrupted for a patch, though. How do I make this happen?

Thanks for any pointers.

OK, I found the information on "Building Monolithic Web Deployed Setups". Good stuff, that. It sounds like this is the way to go.

I'm still unclear on what the best way to ensure that a normal patch will not affect the database file in any way. Any tips would be appreciated.

I'm no expert yet but I am running SQL scripts through functionality in IA8. The way I have setup my build, the patch process will only replace or update files. From what I have seen so far, you would have to do a little work in the update script to add sql scripts to it to modify your database.

The one part that I am not sure of is that there appears to be a mode that will uninstall the previous version and install the new version. Even here though, it does not remove the database unless you setup something specific to remove the database for the product.

Let me know if you sort more of this out. I am working on the Windows-style web deployed updates and some of these issues are similar. Right now I am having problems getting it to do any of the Windows-style auto updates.

Later,
Darren