MAKEMSI quickly and reliably creates MSI files in a non-programmatic way\Source CodeCommandsTableImportFromIdt

---

The "TableImportFromIdt" Command

The Microsoft ORCA (????) tool can be used to export some or all tables into an ".idt" format. As this format is a text format it is very easy to examine in a text editor and if revision controlled you would be able to keep a history of changes that have been made to the files.

As this command can import the .IDT files, this makes them a good candidate for use as template files. You could start each project from a completely empty database and import all you standard tables and rows.

Importing of tables is very quick (in "direct" mode).

This command takes these parameters:

• File Mask for the ".IDT" files (positional)
  This is the absolute or relative filemask to indicate which files you wish to import. The names of the tables and all other required information reside inside these files.

• DIRECT (optional)
  This parameter defaults to "Y" ("direct" mode) and accepts "Y" and "N".

  In direct mode the ".IDT" is processed directly by the "import()" method of the Windows Installer "database" object (see Windows Installer SDK doco). This method first clears out any existing database table and applies the table's schema before reading in the contents (it doesn't merge records).

  When not direct, MAKEMSI will ignore the table's schema and will read the file itself, generating "table" and "row" commands for these. As any existing table is not first cleared the rows are merged, set default "row" validation options to your liking...

EXAMPLE - Import .IDT files

This example shows how all ".IDT" files in a particular directory could be imported:

<$TableImportFromIdt "Exported IDT\*.idt">

Please email me any feedback, additional information or corrections. See this page online (look for updates) MAKEMSI© is (C)opyright Dennis Bareis 2003-2008 (All rights reserved). Saturday May 28 2022 at 3:11pm Visit MAKEMSI's Home Page