Jimco Software Reviews - Wise for Windows Installer 6.1 Professional (continued)
If your application requires a Microsoft SQL Server instance, you're good to go with WFWI. The SQL Server Scripts pane (shown in figure 6) allows you to add SQL Server scripts to create databases, etc. when your application is installed. You can even use properties from your Windows Installer package in your SQL Server scripts. In other words, if you want to create a dialog (more on that later) that prompts the user for the name of a SQL Server instance to use, you can easily grab that name and use it in your SQL Server connection string and scripts.
Figure 6 - The SQL Server Scripts Pane
For the Microsoft .NET Framework developers out there, WFWI has been beefed up substantially. Not only does it now integrate with Visual Studio .NET (see figure 7), but it also makes it easy to modify .NET Framework security on the destination machine. The .NET Framework Security pane shown in figure 8 makes quick work of creating new code groups for .NET Framework code.
Figure 7 - Integration with Visual Studio .NET
Figure 8 - .NET Framework Security
One problem that a software developer may face when deploying software is the unintentional reliance on components that exist on the developer's machine but may not exist on a user's machine. WFWI solves this problem using the Clean Build feature shown in figure 9. By creating a clean build, you can ensure that your application will install correctly on a cleanly built machine. It's one more step in ensuring that your installation is going to be trouble-free for your users.
Figure 9 - Clean Build
Deploying
In addition to creating an installation file, WFWI can also create what's called a Web Deploy package. The benefit of a Web Deploy package is that the user only downloads those files that are necessary for the installation. There are clear advantages to the user here, but there are also advantages to anyone who is distributing software from a Web site hosted with metered bandwidth. By only requiring users to download files that are required, you can save the additional bandwidth overhead of downloading files that the user doesn't need.
Figure 10 - Web Deploy