Having been stuck with Installshield V6 at my previous company, i've managed to get my new company to get me Devstudio 9. Having written an Update Service myself (took a while to get it right!!), i was a little upset to find that the newer versions of installshield shield have this Update Service functionality ..and that my previous company wudn't upgrade! 😞
However, now that i can use it, i very curious as to how i can take advantage of it ... but documentation seems to be lacking in general around the site, and in the Local Help ... which is somewhat disappointing given that i have the capability (in theory) of plugging it into my installs!
I get the general "gist", in that u plug it into the install, plug in some code into ur app to call the service (cudn't find any code samples anywhere, tho!?), then it runs off to Installshields (!?) site to check if there are any updates ... then downloads them from "some" location of ur choosing! Ok... maybe i learnt a LITTLE from noseying round the site!? 🙂
Being the security conscious developer i am, i do have some issues about Installshield hosting this information (no offence!) ... so my main questions are :
Where is the "Hosting" software?? Is this on the DevStudio CD somewhere, or is this another piece of software (Update service??) that we would need to buy? Apart from security, the other aim for this question is for distributing software in a non / restricted internet company environment (ie. I'd want to host on an IntrAnet server!)
If i DID want Installshield hosting my Update Information, does my DevStudio license cover this or would we have to pay out some more for the privalege??
Our main business is Holiday Websites ... and although i probably wudn't be using an update service to keep THAT software up to date, there are a number Admin Tools that will be distributed that we are very interested in using the Update Service for ... to quote our MD ..."That'd be neat!!!" 😄
All information and directions to documentation welcome!
Many companies have built an in-house updater application at one point or another. I hear your comments repeated quite frequently. To be honest, it is why we felt there is a market for the Update Service.
If you sign-up for an evaluation of the Update Service, you will be able to download an SDK that has a full help file that includes code samples. I believe all the documentation you need should be there. But in answer to your specific questions...
Q: Where is the "Hosting" software?? Is this on the DevStudio CD somewhere, or is this another piece of software (Update service??) that we would need to buy?
A: The server software is an IIS application server and DB. It can either be run off InstallShield servers or you can host it yourself. We have a page on the ISUS website site that describes the benefits and pricing for the two options:
Q: If i DID want Installshield hosting my Update Information, does my DevStudio license cover this or would we have to pay out some more for the privalege??
A: No, you still need to pay a yearly fee that is based on the number of end-users who will check our servers. Obviously, we need to price differently if you have 5 million users versus 500 users.
