What’s New in InstallAnywhere 2014
InstallAnywhere 2021
New Features
InstallAnywhere includes the following new features.
Ability to Create Upgrades that Uninstall the Earlier Version If Present Before Installing the New Version
InstallAnywhere includes support for creating upgrades. At run time, if an earlier version of the product is present on target systems, it is uninstalled, and then the new version is installed. If an earlier version is not present, the installer installs the new version.
To configure settings for your upgrade, use the new Upgrades view, which is available from the Project page.
Note that a requirement for upgrade support is that the base version of the product must have been installed with silent mode enabled. That is, the uninstaller must be capable of silently uninstalling the earlier version.
This feature is available in the Premier edition of InstallAnywhere.
To learn more, see:
| • | Updating Applications |
| • | Requirements for Upgrade Support |
| • | Creating an Upgrade |
| • | Enabling Upgrade Support |
| • | Configuring Upgrade Settings |
| • | Detecting Installed Earlier Versions that Need to Be Updated |
| • | Adding Upgrade-Specific Actions to Sequences |
| • | Special Considerations for Upgrade Support |
| • | Upgrades View |
| • | Manage Upgrade Configurations Dialog Box |
Updated Authentication Support for Apple OS X
If you want your OS X–based installers and uninstallers to install files to and remove files from locations where write permissions are restricted for standard users, you can configure your project to require authentication. This support has been updated for OS X 10.8 and later systems. When authentication is required and standard users who are not root users or administrative users with adequate privileges try to launch your installer or uninstaller, they are prompted to enter an administrator name and password in order to proceed.
To indicate whether you want to require authentication for your OS X–based installers and uninstallers, use the settings in the Authentication category in the Mac OS X area (Project page > Platforms view).
This feature is available in the Premier edition of InstallAnywhere.
To learn more, see:
| • | Requiring Elevated Privileges for OS or OS X–Based Installers and Uninstallers |
| • | Platforms View |
Expanded Support for Connecting to MySQL Servers and Running SQL Scripts
InstallAnywhere Premier Edition offers several improvements for connecting to MySQL servers and running SQL scripts.
Enabling End Users to Specify Connection Information for Local and Remote Servers
Now you can add to your projects run-time panels or consoles that enable end users to specify connection information such as the name of the local or remote server, as well as the credentials that should be used to connect to the server through server authentication. In addition, you can optionally enable end users to test the connection information that they entered.
To add the new run-time panels and consoles to a project, add the Choose Database Connection panel or console actions. These actions are available for the Pre-Install view on the Sequence page in the InstallAnywhere Advanced Designer.
By default, these new run-time panels and consoles use variables such as $DB_NAME_VARIABLE$ and $DB_SERVERHOST_VARIABLE$ for storing the values that end users enter.
To learn more, see:
| • | Enabling End Users to Specify Database Connection Information |
| • | Choose Database Connection Panel Action |
| • | Choose Database Connection Console Action |
Support for Creating Databases on Target Systems
The Run SQL Script action now optionally supports the creation of databases on target systems. The Properties Customizer that is displayed when you select this action in the Install view on the Sequence page has a new Create MySQL Database check box that you can use to indicate whether to create the database at run time.
Note that some of the connection-related settings (such as Server Host and Server Port) that were previously displayed when the database host was selected in the Hosts view on the Organization page have been moved to a new tab at the bottom of the view for the Run SQL Script action.
For more information, see the following:
| • | Running a SQL Script |
| • | Run SQL Script Action |
| • | Hosts View |
| • | Database Server Host Settings |
MySQL 5.5 and 5.6 Support
InstallAnywhere now has support for managing MySQL 5.5 and 5.6 databases.
Expanded Documentation on Managing SQL Servers
The documentation on managing SQL servers has been expanded. It now explains how to include the appropriate drivers for connecting to SQL databases and offers additional how-to information. For details, see:
| • | Managing Database Servers |
| • | Adding a SQL Database Host to Your Project |
| • | Including JDBC Drivers for Connecting to SQL Databases |
| • | Obtaining DB2 Drivers |
| • | Obtaining a MySQL Driver |
| • | Obtaining an Oracle Driver |
| • | Obtaining a Generic JDBC Driver |
Support for Deploying Web Applications to Local or Remote Apache Tomcat Servers
InstallAnywhere Premier Edition offers improvements for deploying Web applications to Tomcat servers.
Enabling End Users to Specify Connection Information for Tomcat Servers
Now you can add to your projects run-time panels or consoles that enable end users to specify settings for Apache Tomcat servers before deploying Web applications to these servers. For example, you can enable end users to choose between deploying applications to local or remote Tomcat servers. You can also let end users specify information such as the path on the local Tomcat server where they want to deploy the Web application or the name of the remote Tomcat server.
To add the new run-time panels to a project, add the Tomcat Runtime Deployment panel or console actions. These actions are available for the Pre-Install view on the Sequence page in the InstallAnywhere Advanced Designer.
By default, these new run-time panels and consoles use variables such as $TOMCAT_DEPLOYMENT_OPTION$ and $TOMCAT_SERVER_PATH$ for storing the values that end users enter.
To learn more, see:
| • | Specifying Which Deployment Options to Support for Apache Tomcat Servers |
| • | Deploying Web Applications (WAR and EAR Archives) to Servers |
| • | Enabling End Users to Specify Apache Tomcat Server Information |
| • | Deploy WAR/EAR Archive Action |
| • | Tomcat Runtime Deployment Panel Action |
| • | Tomcat Runtime Deployment Console Action |
Apache Tomcat 7 and 8 Support
InstallAnywhere now has support for deploying Web applications to Tomcat 7.0.x and 8.0 servers.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 and Ubuntu 14.04 Support
InstallAnywhere now supports the following platforms for the installer run-time environment, as well as for the InstallAnywhere authoring environment:
| • | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 (desktop and server editions; x64) |
| • | Ubuntu 14.04 (x64) |
Enhancements
New Variable for the Browse for CD Button on Some Apple OS X–Based Systems
The Change Media run-time panel has a Browse button that should enable end users to browse to the next installation media that they want to use. Apple OS X–based systems that use Oracle Java 7 with an update earlier than update 45 do not support native resources for the button on that panel, so the browse button does not work as expected. If you want to use Swing resources instead of native resources for that panel and avoid problems with the browse button, you can set the new ia.mac.filechooser.substituteSwingInsteadOfNativeForOlderJRE7 variable to true for installers that target OS X–based systems that use Oracle Java 7 with an update earlier than update 45. The default value for this property is false.
To set ia.mac.filechooser.substituteSwingInsteadOfNativeForOlderJRE7 to true, specify the following command-line parameter in your project (Project page > JVM Settings view > Installer Settings tab > Optional Installer Arguments):
-Dia.mac.filechooser.substituteSwingInsteadOfNativeForOlderJRE7=true
To learn more, see $IA_BROWSE_FOLDERS$ Variable.
Enhanced Support for Registering Windows Services
The Register Windows Service action has a new Service Description setting that lets you specify the description of the Windows service that your installer is registering on Windows-based target systems. The description is displayed is displayed in the service control manager’s Description column. It is also displayed in the Description box on the General tab of the service’s Properties dialog box.
See Also