The Definitive Guide to Windows Installer
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Product Description
Product Description
When a company builds and ships software, the installation process is often the first opportunity for a customer to view the the product and the company—and the installation experience can make or break a lasting impression. So this book is ideal for companies and developers who want to impress their clientele.
This book covers every aspect of using the Windows Installer, the underlying installer technology in Windows. A valuable tool for you software developers, this book helps ensure thorough and reliable installation for your customers. Most other books for software developers end too abruptly and omit critical information, like how to create the necessary installation software. But The Definitive Guide to Windows Installer picks up where the other books trail off.
About the Author
Phil graduated from the University of Aston, Birmingham, England, with a BSc in Chemistry but preferred computers to test tubes and eventually worked for 15 years on developing Operating Systems for Burroughs and Unisys mainframes. Phil started programming for Windows in the early 90's and has developed in MFC, ATL COM, Visual Basic, and C#. He has been involved in installation design and technology for about eight years, and became a Microsoft "Most Valuable Professional" for Windows Installer in 2003. To get away from computers, he plays and records guitar, and enjoys camping in the California desert. Phil works for Unisys Corporation in Mission Viejo California.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not definitive and not a particularly great tutorial,
By J. S. Hardman "Consultant software developer ... (Near London, UK) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Definitive Guide to Windows Installer (Paperback)
Includes some useful bits of information, but this is not detailed enough to be a reference on Windows Installer, whilst not being good enough to be recommended as a tutorial.
It does contain references to other resources which are useful, but it barely touches on products that many people will use to create their MSIs in a commercial environment. As mentioned, it contains some useful bits of information, but it really doesn't give much advice on how best to design installers. In places where you think it is about to give advice, the language suddenly becomes really fuzzy, sitting on the fence rather than giving clear guidance. As for handling the minutiae of problems encountered in real deployment situations, such as how best to handle pushing out Microsoft redistributables to the Winsxs directory, don't even think about looking for definitive answers. What it is good is that it touches on a range of subjects relating to how installers work. The language may be too fuzzy to be useful in itself, but by touching on those subjects and giving some references to other resources I found it at least gave me a nudge in the direction of the answers I was looking for. In reality, those answers usually came from the MSDN or elsewhere, but finding them was easier as a result of having read this book. Certainly, based on reading this book and following references to other resources, I have not only developed MSIs, maintained MSIs developed by other people, but also written utilities to assist in deployment, particularly in the area of validating what is in MSIs and identifying which MSIs are installed on which servers etc. So, not definitive, not a good tutorial, doesn't contain piles of good advice, but it does give you a taste of what an installer does internally, how to access those details both using tools such as Orca (which has proven very useful) and using your own code, as well as providing references to other, better resources. You could find this material using a search engine and MSDN, but if you like to do your reading from books, there is little alternative when it comes to Windows Installer than this book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A must for anyone who packages MSI files,
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This review is from: The Definitive Guide to Windows Installer (Paperback)
MSI packaging is one of those subjects that hardly has any good books on it, which is a pity as the whole subject is in much need of some updated literature. Phil Wilson's book is one of the few good books on Windows Installer. It's written more from a programmer's perspective, but nonetheless gives some excellent information on the Windows Installer and how an MSI file is constructed.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Don't Bother Installing This In Your Bookshelf,
By
This review is from: The Definitive Guide to Windows Installer (Paperback)
Much thinner volume than it ought to be for the subject, and it's grandiose claim to be 'The Definitive Guide' is nothing more than a hollow boast. Very patchy, lacking even a decent overview of the concept. I've picked it up occasionally in the vain hope of finding an answer to a WI question, only to put it down again and revert to MSDN. I've definitely wasted 20 quid here.
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