Mark,

============================== Unfortunately, MSI is the industry-standard for windows, _and_ it is required to have 'certified for windows' products (i.e. 'windows logo').

You can not build products that will meet certification for Windows if the installers or installer tools don't use MSI. Unfortunately, InnoSetup (and others such as NullSoft's installer) do not use MSI.

We have also had a not small amount of customers actually _request_ that we make MSI-based installers, as they are bound by the same constraints, and must install 'bundled' versions of MySQL using the same technology for _their_ windows products.

There is also a whole industry segment centered around the management of windows software installation and management for datacenters and large amounts of desktops, and those all use MSI as well...So I think that our installer team's hand was 'forced' on what they could choose. ==============================

Fair enough. But let's take this in the other direction, just to see if anyone salutes. Is a Microsoft logo a requirement? To be honest, I see no value in it. If they wrote better software, I would probably be using SQL Server. Somehow (I could be very wrong), I suspect that people who want a logo would probably steer clear of that open source stuff???

I maintain that the MSI rules are so incredibly complicated as to make them dangerous. It is very rare for you guys to make something that does not work, especially when it is labeled as a released product. I find the intersection of your apparent failure and MSI to be suggestive. Of course, your installer is very new and quite ambitious, so it is not shocking that there would be problems, and/or simply missing features.

Re the "no catalog" option, should I report that elsewhere? I would much rather us spend time on it than debugging MSI glitches. If we do both, so be it.

Regards,

Bill

Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D. University of Florida Department of Anesthesiology PO Box 100254 Gainesville, FL 32610-0254

Email: bil...@anest4.anest.ufl.edu Tel: (352) 846-1285 FAX: (352) 392-7029