DIM References View

InstallShield 2008

Project

The DIM References view is available in the following project types:

Basic MSI

Merge Module

The InstallShield Collaboration solution is an alternative to the traditional model of installation authoring in which a single release engineer creates an installation for an entire team of software developers. In the traditional model, the burden is on the release engineer to understand the requirements for the overall installation architecture and user experience. However, the release engineer must rely on each developer to provide the installation requirements of the developer’s software module after the design phase.

Collaboration enables software developers to contribute at an earlier stage of the installation process. Now, developers can communicate installation requirements in an XML-structured file that is authored and maintained alongside other source code that make up a software module. These files are Developer Installation Manifest files (.dim), and they can be authored using InstallShield Collaboration, a tool that is available for Visual Studio development environments, or InstallAnywhere Collaboration, a tool that is available for Eclipse development environments. Both tools enables a developer to create or edit a .dim file in the built-in editor. The software developer can also edit a .dim file using a third-party XML editor. In any case, once the developer creates a .dim file, then you, the release engineer, can reference it in an installation and wrap the package with a chosen installer technology.

Within InstallShield, you can use the DIM References view to manage all DIM references in your project. DIM references are a grouping of similar application data items such as files, shortcuts, and registry entries organized from the developer’s perspective. Your users will never see DIM references during the installation; the data will be set up on their systems depending on which features are selected for installation.

Project

In Basic MSI projects, DIM references must be associated with a feature.

Merge Module projects do not contain features. If you add a merge module that contains DIM references to an installation project, InstallShield associates the DIM references with the feature in the installation project that contains the merge module.

Several tabs are associated with the DIM reference that is selected in the DIM References view:

Understanding the Difference Between the DIM References View and the Setup Design View in Basic MSI Projects

Although the DIM References view appears to be an exact subset of the Setup Design view, and, in fact, you can create and modify DIM references in precisely the same way in both views, there is one major difference between them. The Setup Design view is different because it allows you to associate DIM references with features.