CardExchange® Advanced Installation Options

By default, a CardExchange® installation is done by running the Setup.exe file and walking through the steps presented by the wizard. These steps allow the user to specify information like the installation folder, the database folder and the components to be installed. Although this scenario is perfectly fine in most cases, there are situations in which more control over the installation is required. Imagine for example that

·        You want the installation to be done silently, that is, without user interface, but you still want to determine the settings you would otherwise set in the installation wizard, or

·        You want to change settings in the CardExchange.ini file during installation that cannot be controlled with the installation wizard, or

·        You want to suppress the installation of the default data folder.

The installer offers two mechanisms to obtain more control over the installation process: the use of a Setup.ini file and the use of command-line switches.

Setup.ini file

When executed, the installer searches in the folder where the Setup.exe is run from for the presence of a Setup.ini file. If the file is found, its contents is read and used in the installation. Below is an example of a Setup.ini file.

With the Setup.ini file, you can control nine parameters, all of which are shown in the example above with their respective default values on a 64-bits English-language Windows 7 system with user name Administrator. If a parameter is omitted from the Setup.ini, its default value will be used. Since the default value of some parameters is system dependent, it is recommended to omit a parameter if you wish to use the default value. The settings are explained in more detail below.

AllowDemoMode

This setting has two possible values: True (default) and False. If set to True, users without a valid license will have the possibility to run CardExchange in demo mode for 42 days. At start-up they will see a window that tells them how many demo days are left with three buttons: Evaluate, Activate and Cancel. If set to False, users without a valid license will be directed to the activation window immediately, without having to press the Activate button first.

DatabaseDir

During installation, CardExchange will create the folder specified in this parameter on the target system and add two sub folders: Data and License respectively. The first folder is the data directory and will contain the configuration files. The second folder is the license directory and will contain the license-code file lservrc (for stand-alone licenses only). The default value of DatabaseDir is My Documents\CardExchange, where My Documents refers to the My Documents folder of the current user. For situations where CardExchange is needed by multiple users, this is rarely a good choice. It is preferable to set the database directory to a network share with automatic backup facilities, especially in the case of Small Business Servers, where the data folder can be shared between multiple users.

Distributor

This parameter contains an integer value that corresponds to the client code of the distributor. Its default value is 0 (distributor unknown). The value is copied to the CardExchange.ini file and is used by CardExchange to determine whether a personalized splash screen should be shown. Please, contact sales if you want to have a personalized splash screen for your company.

InstallDemoCards

This parameter can be True (default) or False. If set to True, the installer will copy a demo configuration to the data directory. The demo cards help new users to get started more quickly and many actually use the demo databases for production purposes after adapting them to their needs. For Small Business Servers, however, it is often not desirable that a client installation writes files to the centralized data folder.

InstallDir

This parameter determines the installation folder where the CardExchange executable and its dependencies will be stored. The default value is the C:\Program Files\ExchangeIt\CardExchange on 32-bit systems and C:\Program Files (x86)\ExchangeIt\CardExchange on 64-bit systems. We strongly advise not to change this value unless you have a very good reason to do so.

When doing the complete CardExchange installation, the installer also writes a CE Inside demo project to C:\Program Files (x86)\ExchangeIt\CardExchange. The demo project is always copied to this folder, no matter what value for InstallDir is supplied. The installation of the CE Inside demo project can be suppressed by setting the InstallLevel parameter to 30 (see below).

InstallLevel

The install-level parameter determines which components of CardExchange will be installed. The default value is 100, which results in all components to be installed. The alternative values are:

·        30: suppress the installation of the CE Inside demo project,

·        20: Only install the dispatcher and the print server, and

·        10: Only install the print server.

The last two options are known not to work well as they still install part of the CardExchange client. Therefore, we recommend using this option only to suppress the installation of the CE Inside demo project, if desired.

LanguageCode

The CardExchange.ini file contains a setting called LanguageCode that determines in which language the application will be launched. By default, the CardExchange language is set to the language in which the installation is done, which is by default the language of the operating system. The LanguageCode parameter in the Setup.ini file can override this behaviour. It does not affect the language used during installation.

LicensedByClient

This parameter is copied to the CardExchangeDispatcher.ini and CardExchangePrintServer.ini files and determines whether the Dispatcher or Print Server obtains its license from a local license file or from the client program. This parameter should only be set to True if the Dispatcher or Print Server are used with CardExchange Inside. The default value is False.

LicenseServer

This parameter is copied to CardExchange.ini and determines whether and where the client should look for a Small Business Server license. The default value is no-net, which applies to stand-alone licenses. For Small Business Servers, its value should be set to the DNS name or IP address of the server where the SBS License Manager runs.

UpgradeNotifications

This parameter determines whether the client will show upgrade notifications when a free (minor) upgrade is available for current major version. The default value is True.

Command-line switches

All of the above parameters can also be set via command-line switches. Command-line switches also offer additional features that enable silent or semi-silent installations and the creation of installation logs. An example of a command-line installation is:

Below, this syntax will be explained in more detail.

/s

This option forces the Setup.exe to run in silent mode as far as the InstallShield portion of the setup is concerned. To have a really silent installation, this option needs to be combined with the proper MSI arguments (see below).

/v”MSI_arguments”

This option causes the specified MSI arguments to be passed to the Windows installer.

/L

This option sets the language of the dialog shown during installation. It also determines which language code is written to CardExchange.ini, unless overridden by the LanguageCode parameter. If this option is omitted, the installer uses the default system language. The above example forces the installation to be in English and the language code of CardExchange to be set to “EN”.

/qn

This MSI argument sets the user-interface level of the installation to no user interface. Other possibilities are

• /qb: basic user interface, progress only, no prompts,

• /qr: reduced user interface, dialog at the end of installation, and

• /qf: full user interface.

/l*vx %TEMP%\CardExchangeInstall.log

This MSI argument causes an extensive installation log to be saved to the specified location. If this option is omitted, no installation log generated. %TEMP% refers to the system-defined folder for temporary files.

DATABASEDIR=\"C:\CardExchange\"

This MSI argument changes the default CardExchange data directory to the specified path. Please, note that the MSI parameter is written in all capitals, that the specified path is enclosed in double quotes and that the quotes have been escaped with backslashes. All parameters that can be set in the Setup.ini file, can also be set using command-line switches as is shown in this example for the DatabaseDir, the InstallDir, the LicenseServer and the InstallLevel. If a parameter is specified both as command-line switch and in the Setup.ini file, the Setup.ini has preference. In order to use the default value, the parameter must be omitted from both the command-line switches and the Setup.ini.