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Which language? - 6/22/2008 6:24:34 PM

ninjamaster

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I have been using VBS for a couple of years now. Not doing anything *too* difficult and would class my knowledge as beginner to intermediate.

I have been tasked with the followinga at work.

We are automatting our software installs. (I can package things up with Wise, etc.) but for ease for our support teams looking at an automatted installer menu. I'll hopefully describe the scenario correctly.

All install files will be held in a central repository.

I want to create a GUI menu (I've had a wee play about with AutoIT and created a dummy menu for a proof of concept meeting with directors) that is generated from the directory structure on the server.

It will create the vendor list, then branch off with the software list and version numbers. I also need to set a flag on each software a department (and each sw may have more than one dept) so that support can pick a department and the GUI will auto pick the software assigned to that dept.

Now regardless of how I do this I will have to learn it all new as I have no idea how to in VBS (Hence my earlier posts regarding arrays and recursive directories)

So the question is.

Is VBS the best option? Or should I be looking at other languages? PowerSHELL? Will SQL help? .NET?

As you can tell I'm swimming slightly out of my depth and my water wings are slowly deflating. :p

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RE: Which language? - 6/22/2008 6:28:37 PM

DiGiTAL.SkReAM

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For me, I would use VBS wrapped inside of an HTA.

But then, I was beaten severly as a child and it might have affected me.

Seriously though, if everything is in a central repository, and you are creating self-installing .MSI or .EXE pacjages for each product prior to placing it in the directory tree, then yeah, it should be a piece of cake.

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RE: Which language? - 6/22/2008 6:36:13 PM

ninjamaster

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lol.

I'm just gonna have to try and take it bit by bit. I need to work it out on my head/on paper first on how it's going to hang together.

Like I said this will all be new stuff within VBS that I need to learn (Multi-dimensional arrays, flags (can you set flags? )) so time to put on the mountaineering kit and start climbing this steep learning curve (More like a sheer cliff face!)

:)

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Post #: 3

RE: Which language? - 6/22/2008 8:23:02 PM

ninjamaster

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As a side note....

Any books that come highly recommended?

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RE: Which language? - 6/23/2008 12:21:53 AM

dm_4ever

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Since HTA's are nothing more than HTML with VBScript this site should be helpful: http://www.w3schools.com/htmldom/default.asp

Building this GUI with an HTA should be something you can do...also seeing how you may be working with several pieces of information a simple database or XML file might come in handy...probably xml since you would be able to change it easily.

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RE: Which language? - 6/23/2008 5:51:00 AM

Rischip

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Here's how I would do it. Create a database, either MSAccess, SQL Express 2005, or Straight XML (You don't need to know XML if you use ADO and the saveas XML. This can be done easily with an ActiveX control)
You would house the database centrally with the apps, and the GUI would be able to pull command lines, descriptions, versions, paths and groups out of the database. This is actually much easier than it sounds. Then using an HTA, wrapping some VBScript and ADO/recordset code, your whole project would become completely dynamic.

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