Installing Desktop Engine

Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE 2000) can be installed in the following ways:

Users who have a current MSDE 2000 license can run the Desktop Engine Setup.exe program from the command prompt to install a new instance of MSDE 2000. Setup can also be used to apply a service pack to an existing instance of MSDE 2000, provided the instance was previously installed using Desktop Engine Setup.exe.

·	Application developers who plan to redistribute Microsoft® SQL Server™ Desktop Engine (MSDE 2000) with their own applications should code an application installation wrapper program to:

·	Call the MSDE 2000 Setup.exe.

·	Evaluate the return code received from the Desktop Engine Setup.exe to evaluate the success of the installation. For example, you can determine if the installation failed because there are already 16 instances on the computer or the instance name was not valid.

·	Install the application (if the installation of the instance of MSDE 2000 was successful).

Application developers can alternatively tell their customers to use the Desktop Engine Setup.exe to install an instance of MSDE 2000 as a prerequisite to installing the application itself. This should only be done if the person installing the application is an experienced SQL Server user.

All new applications that distribute MSDE 2000 should use one of these methods.

For more information about running the Desktop Engine Setup, see Customizing Desktop Engine Setup.exe.

The advantage of using the Desktop Engine Setup.exe to install instances of MSDE 2000 is that these instances can be patched by Microsoft SQL Server 2000 service packs. The application vendor does not have to build and deploy MSDE 2000 patches. An issue the application developer should consider is that customers can independently uninstall the instance of MSDE 2000 used by the application, or apply a later service pack that raises compatibility issues in the application.

The latest versions of MSDE 2000 include Windows Installer-based merge modules that can be used to embed the installation of MSDE 2000 in any Windows Installer-based setup program. These are provided only to support existing applications that still use merge modules. Using merge modules to install an instance of MSDE 2000 has these disadvantages:

·	The instance of MSDE 2000 cannot be patched independently of the application. Only a patch module supplied by the application vendor can be applied to the instance. MSDE 2000 service packs directly from Microsoft cannot be applied to the instance.

·	The application vendor must build an MSDE 2000 patch file for every MSDE 2000 service pack, and then distribute those patch files to all customers. Customers cannot simply download and apply the latest Microsoft service pack.

·	Future releases of SQL Server will not include merge modules.

For more information about maintaining merge modules, see Using the SQL Server Desktop Engine Merge Modules.

Caution

Some SQL Server 2000 compact discs have a folder named MSDE that contains the first version of MSDE 2000. The first version of MSDE 2000 does not address issues related to the Slammer worm. Do not install MSDE 2000 from the SQL Server 2000 compact disc. Instead, download the MSDE 2000 file from the latest SQL Server 2000 Service Pack, and use those files to install MSDE 2000. The latest SQL Server 2000 Service Pack is available at this Web site.

Later versions of SQL Server 2000 include an MSDE 2000 SP3a CD that does address issues related to the Slammer worm.