Noob Question - Installshield creating installer with multiple msi's
Hey guys, I'm very new to the Installer environment as my background is more in web development. However, I am creating the installer for a software application that contains several component msi's. these components are upgraded/updated regularly when new features are added to the application. I am using Installshield 9 Professional. My problem is:
1. how to deploy all the component msi's - I have tried using the custom actions feature of installshield (which manages to deploy one msi fine) but it gives me an error when i try to deploy more than one msi - yes i know this is against microsoft's industry standard. Because i need to deploy in total about 6-7 msi's (these msi's were writtern using microsoft installer.
2. how to write my own updater alikened to the microsoft windows updater or similar, so that when the application starts it will be able to tell if there are changes made to the components of the application software and downloads the updates automatically.
Can anyone please tell me how would i be able to do this?
Also, are there any learning resources or online courses I can do to improve my knowledge in this field? (I live in Australia...)
Windows Installer 4.5 now allows multiple MSIs to be "chained", which would appear to be the feature you require here. InstallShield 2009 incorporates some support for this functionality, but not having used InstallShield 9 for a long time I can only surmise that in order to achieve this with that version you would have to identify and add the required new tables via the Direct Editor (I deliberately waited until IS2009 was available in order to avoid this!).
I have successfully chained a number of MSIs in one project, although I haven't yet got the feature to stream them into the .exe to work (see my post elsewhere).
