VS 2005 Setup Project, SQL Server 2005 Express, and a dash of DB Installation

2007-06-12T02:57:00Z

Greetings, this is not only my first blog here (bare with me!) but the first in a series on creating a Visual Studio 2005 Setup project with the below basic requirements. I would love to hear how others have solved or gotten around the problems or simply suggestions you can offer.

For this blog entry I will cover just a summary of the basic requirements, and links to some great information I've run across others have provided on the net. Some of these links may not be exactly pertinent to meeting the requirements but I thought they may be useful to others to depending upon your requirements and a central place to find them.

Basic Requirements

* Create an installation package for a client/server application using a VS 2005 Setup Project.

- Startup the windows service at the end of installation.

- Certain assemblies need to be dotfuscated and linked at the time the setup package is created.

* Database script installation (full install of tables, procs, etc... with new user created specifically for this database)

* Allowable database servers to be selected by the user installing: SQL Server 2000, 2005, or 2005 Express.

* The option to install an instance of SQL Server 2005 Express if it does not exist on the machine.

* Other Prerequisites (to be installed if they do not exist): Windows Installer 3.1, and the .Net 2.0 framework.

* Probably don't remember some others, currently at home so don't have the project in front me of me. Will update any I left out as I realize I forgot them.

Terms, parts and pieces being used and links with more information on them for starters

* VS 2005 Setup Project

- Visual Studio 2005 Windows Application Setup Project

* SQL Server Express

- Embedding SQL Server Express into Custom Applications

* Custom Actions

- Using a Custom Action to Create a Database at Installation

* The Visual Studio 2005 Bootstrapper

- Use the Visual Studio 2005 Bootstrapper to Kick-Start Your Installation

- Authoring a Custom Bootstrapper Package for Visual Studio 2005

- Bootstrap Manifest Generator (Very useful!)

* The following link lists the error codes that are returned by the Windows Installer functions MsiExec.exe and InstMsi.exe.

- Windows Installer Error Codes

Issues Found

* While currently are requirement does not include Vista I've tried out our installer on it and ran into the following installer error when using custom actions, below it is a link to Aaron Stebner's Weblog that has great information on it and a solution.

- Installer Error Code 2869 and Aaron Stebner's Weblog on the issue.

* A SQL Server Express wrapper cannot be MSI-based because Windows Installer does not support multiple instantiation of the Windows Installer service. This is the main problem I've ran across which doesn't allow me to start up a new process to run the SQL Server Express installation if the option to install a new instance of Express is chosen inside the assembly being ran by one of my custom actions. If anyone else has ran across this situation I'd like to hear how you went about solving it.

So the above is a brief summary and the scope of what I will be covering in my upcoming blogs. In my next blog I will start by covering the easiest part, a quick look at the basic setup project to get the files on on there.

Ken Gabe

VS 2005 Setup Project, SQL Server 2005 Express, and a dash of DB Installation