InstallShield wizards being ported to Solaris Move seen as boon to ISVs, administrators

July  1998

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San Francisco (July 27, 1998) -- InstallShield Software, the company that makes software installation wizards for windows packages, is porting its InstallShield development tool to Solaris.

Jim Wright, the director of developer relations for InstallShield, says that his company is working with Sun to add Solaris-specific APIs to its InstallShield Java Edition so that Solaris developers will be able to create Windows-like installation wizards for their Unix applications.

The APIs will support both Java and native Solaris installation, says Solaris Senior Product Manager Tom Goguen. Though the APIs will be written in Java, they will not necessarily become part of the Java platform, Goguen says. According to him, installation APIs are not something that has been defined in the Java platform, adding "this is not something that will necessarily go into the Java Development Kit."

The technology will also be used to simplify installation of Solaris packages, starting with Solaris 2.7, which is expected sometime this fall. Sun's Goguen says that some of the applications that are co-packaged with Solaris 2.7 will use the InstallShield software, and that Solaris's Web Start installation software will eventually use these wizards to simplify set up and administration of the OS.

Sun has no word on whether or when the installation wizards will become part of its Solaris or Java development tools.

Solaris installation wizard

With the announcement, which is expected to be made tomorrow, Solaris becomes the first Unix platform to use the InstallShield, but analysts predict that other vendors may soon follow. If it does what Sun is claiming, I think it will be widely accepted, and other Unix vendors will adopt it as well," says Sandy Sampson, a principal analyst at InfoSpin, a research firm.

Sampson predicts that ISVs will probably be "the most interested" in the software, but, she adds, "it could really be used by anybody doing a software installation."

InstallShield for Java will have the Solaris APIs sometime in the next few months, says Wright. Presently, it costs $500.

--Robert McMillan, SunWorld

Resources

• InstallShield Java Edition http://www.installshield.com/java/
• Solaris Web Start Wizards (available as of July 28) http://www.sun.com/solaris/webstart

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URL: http://www.sunworld.com/swol-07-1998/swol-07-installshield.html
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