August 15, 2011

More about Upgrades

A great challenge that the Application Packaging team faces during the installer development is to make decision about how are we going to distribute future releases to customers? It depends on various factors like
  • How big is the installation?
  • What will be the impact if your customer has to reinstall the product? For example re-installation will have an adverse effect on realtime applications with huge database.
  • Frequency of upgrades to be released
Here is what Shieldmaster have compiled on Upgrade Strategy, which will help to address Customer's concern by choosing appropriate Upgrade technique.

InstallTalk's recommendations on when to use major or minor upgrades

If you would like to have a single installer with support for seamless, which should not to disturb existing installation during upgrade and for new customers the same should behave like a fresh installation, then minor upgrade is your choice. Here is the Step by Step approach to create minor upgrade.