ArcGIS Mobile 9.3 Runtime Installer

Well things have been pretty busy over the last few weeks. Recovering from the ESRI New Zealand User Conference 2008 and following up on a number of issues.

I have been working on a few ArcGIS Mobile 9.3 applications since then as well and came across an area a few users might not know. I have been been writing some Windows Forms Applications, making use of the ArcGIS Mobile 9.3 ADF. Running and testing these applications on a machine where ArcGIS Server has been installed no problem as all the relevant files exist. Running and testing these applications on a machine where ArcGIS Server has not been installed will cause them to crash. Now if you do not handle some of the exceptions properly you will find it very difficult to diagnose what the problem is.

If you have just created a standard Windows Form Application and you are using the built in Application Framework then your application will most likely crash with a System.InvalidOperationException. On a tablet or laptop which does not have much software installed it’s going to take a while to figure out what this error means. Digging deep down the error is a result of the ArcGIS Mobile 9.3 Runtime not being available.

ArcGIS Mobile 9.3 Runtime is a set of DLL’s and a registry key that the ArcGIS Mobile 9.3 ADF makes use of. Instead of manually going through and copying and pasting files to each tablet or laptop, you can create a deployment package.

Earlier this year ESRI provided a ArcGIS Mobile 9.3 Runtime Installer. This was made available via the Code Gallery on the ArcGIS Mobile Resource Centre. This is a nice little installation package with source code but I have found a few problems with using installer.

As such I have created my own ArcGIS Mobile 9.3 Runtime Installer which is slightly smarter and provides some additional support.

This new installer provides support for x86 and x64 OS’s. Everything from Microsoft Windows XP upwards.

It also runs through a number of checks before installing. The ArcGIS Mobile 9.3 Runtime will only be installed if required and only the required files will be installed. The installer also supports installations on machines running or not running ArcGIS Server 9.3 already. Any existing files already installed will not be overwritten. On uninstall registry key entries are also maintained so that any other ArcGIS software installed will continue to run.

This new ArcGIS Mobile 9.3 Runtime Installer can be downloaded from the Code Gallery on the ArcGIS Mobile Resource Centre  here: http://resources.esri.com/arcgismobile/…