Changes to DP4 Installation in 4.621

There are significant changes to DP4 installation as of release 4.621. The changes are designed to make the DP4 installer easier to use and to prevent incorrect installation.

• Upgrade installation of the base DP4 set is now accomplished by selecting the "Base DP4 for Windows" product. This includes all the files that would be installed when making an initial installation, but with the following changes:

  • Where possible DP4 configuration files are not replaced, but upgraded by applying necessary changes to the currently installed files.
  • When the system database is installed information user and printer information from the old system database is automatically preserved. Also the system database name is reset to SYSTEM to ensure the new system database is used.
• The base DP4 program set now includes SQL (but not the ODBC driver), and two ADCs useful in analysing problems: AUXDEBUG and AUXDUPE. On the other hand files only required for supporting 16 bit applications are no longer installed as part of the base product, but are available in the "Interface to DP4 for Legacy Applications" product. This includes support for both MS-DOS and 16 bit Windows applications.
• There is no longer any prompt before databases are over-written.

• Additional components, such as C Programming Support, that previously required several related components to be installed, are now installed as a single component. A new Details... button allows you to select which sub-components of such components to install. The interface is similar to the Add/Remove Windows Components in Control Panel, except that the DP4 installer does not remove products that were already installed but are not selected for installation again.

• Aspects of installation such as creating short-cuts in the start menu are now handled using "HTML applications". This allows the installer to provide considerably more sophisticated functionality in this area. You are recommended to allow the installer to create a start menu for DP4 when upgrading to 4.621.