Evaluating Update Service

[nweber]

Evaluating Update Service I am evaluating update service and I still have not been able to get it to work correctly. I was wondering if anyone had any opinions on the product. Has anyone compared this to other products out there? Would you recommend using update service ? Any feedback is appreciated.

Thanks

[Brad_Peterson]

nweber,

It would be best if you explain your updating scenario, what kind of product or products you have, how many customers you have, what kind of program you use to create the installer, how you uninstall your product or products, the kinds of changes you see yourself making to the program (and the files it will affect), and how you envision that the updating should work. From there, I can give you my opinion to your question.

[nweber]

Hi Brad, We have approximately 750 users right now. Some of them are enterprise users and must be upgraded by their IT staff while the remaining users can download and install it directly. All users at a particular firm must be upgraded at the same time. We are using Installshield 10.5 for the installer. Changes would be distributed approximately 1 to 2 times per year. The application is a java application and we will be moving to .net in the future.

Any other questions?

Thanks for your help

[Brad_Peterson]

I would think that would work. It sounds like you are going to use InstallShield 10.5 to make a patch roughly every 6 months. Then, you just want to send that patch out automatically to non-enterprise users. For enterprise users, they wouldn't automatically see the update. Instead, I'd assume you'd have to manually email or tell the admins where to get your patch so they can install it themselves for those enterprise users.

Your scenario fits well with what Update Service can accomplish with the API.

To answer your question about other products and how it works. There aren't really any other products out there to handle this sort of stuff. Auto updating isn't a standardized science yet. Everyone has their own approach. InstallShield Update Service tries to standardize some of that process. Besides InstallShield Update Service, most people just write their own in house solution to deliver updates and use the Installer program to design new patches.

Update Service does a good job for those wishing to follow the basic standard model of one application receiving one update several weeks or months apart. It would probably save money in the long run to use their system than to try to build your own in house solution. For complex multi-file or multi-patch updates that require detailed processing for each update...well...my experience has been like trying to pound a square peg into a round hole. It's been really frustraing. But for the basic stuff, you should be ok.

[nweber]

Thanks Brad for the information