Installshield

The "Big Dog" of the category is Installshield. If you have installed other software on your computer, the chances are good that you have already seen their software in action. This is the software that big software shops use. Installshield isn't just a deployment utility, it's an entire deployment development environment that can handle other operating systems, special requirements, custom graphics ... you name it and Installshield probably does it. With list prices that start at $400 and go to $2,000 ... it should! Free downloadable evaluations are available at their site. And don't miss their Flash presentation of their product. It's worth watching!

Number two and trying harder is Wise Solutions. Where Installshield provides a complete standalone environment for building deployment packages, Wise has integrated their product into Visual Studio.NET itself. But Wise gives you the ability to test and debug your installation, manage security, and has advanced support for other systems like the SQL Server database and the IIS web server. Wise doesn't have the wide range of products that Installshield has. The Wise solution for .NET is listed at $2,000 and a downloadable evaluation is available.

Remotesoft Salamander - Another Approach

To deploy an application, the target computer, the one that the solution will be installed on, must have the .NET Framework installed. And, as the book notes, the file that can be used to install it is more than 20 MB! My first hard drive was only a quarter of that!

Microsoft's strategy is to make .NET a standard part of every computer's software so this will not be a problem in their ideal world. But we live in the real world, so it can be a problem for you.

One solution to this problem is to just install those parts of the .NET Framework that your application actually uses! The .NET Framework is huge because it includes the code to solve every programming problem that .NET can be used for. (That is, every programming problem - period!) But you're not going to need all of that for your application.

Remotesoft is a company that offers a solution to this problem with a product they call the Salamander .NET Linker and Mini-Deployment Tool. This tool simply checks to see what parts of the Framework are required for your app and only installs those with your installation!

Although this can solve some problems, it might create a few too. For example, if Microsoft upgrades .NET, you will eventually have to repeat the installation of your app with the newer Framework. As Remotesoft stated it, "If the exe is re-compiled with a newer Framework, the exe ... will need to re-run by our linker tool to generate a new set of files." Another problem is that because their tool isolates each application, if multiple applications are installed on the same machine, mutiple .NET Framework files will exist. Remotesoft notes that although, "this isolation takes more disk space, but it also results in a very good feature: the mini-deployed applications will be guaranteed to run well no matter what versions of the .NET Framework are installed."

An additional benefit is that Salamander gives you, however, is the ability to create a application that can be run directly from a CD without even being installed! Take that, Microsoft!