Question

I am making an application using c#.net. The application relies on a PostgrSQL ODBC driver and therefore has to check if the driver has already been installed on the user’s computer. If not the ODBC driver has to be installed during my applications own installation process. The DSN also has to be configured during the setup.

My question is therefore, is there a way to first check for a driver during setup and, if it’s not there, can the setup be set to automatically install a driver and configure the DSN?

I’m using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 but I can’t see how to include another setup in the publishing wizard. I am also struggling to find any useful information on Google or stackoverflow.

Regards
Peter

Answer 1

I found a good example for the first part of my question on this website.

As for the second part, “how to configure the DSN”, I found another code snippet which only needed some tweaking.

    private const string ODBC_INI_REG_PATH = "SOFTWARE\\ODBC\\ODBC.INI\\";
    private const string ODBCINST_INI_REG_PATH = "SOFTWARE\\ODBC\\ODBCINST.INI\\";

    /// <summary>
    /// Creates a new System-DSN entry with the specified values. If the DSN exists, the values are updated.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="dsnName">Name of the DSN for use by client applications</param>
    /// <param name="description">Description of the DSN that appears in the ODBC control panel applet</param>
    /// <param name="server">Network name or IP address of database server</param>
    /// <param name="driverName">Name of the driver to use</param>
    /// <param name="trustedConnection">True to use NT authentication, false to require applications to supply username/password in the connection string</param>
    /// <param name="database">Name of the datbase to connect to</param>
    public static void CreateDSN2(string dsnName, string description, string server, string driverName, bool trustedConnection, string database, string user, string password, string port)
    {
        // Lookup driver path from driver name
        var driverKey = Registry.LocalMachine.CreateSubKey(ODBCINST_INI_REG_PATH + driverName);
        if (driverKey == null) throw new Exception(string.Format("ODBC Registry key for driver '{0}' does not exist", driverName));
        string driverPath = driverKey.GetValue("Driver").ToString();

        // Add value to odbc data sources
        var datasourcesKey = Registry.LocalMachine.CreateSubKey(ODBC_INI_REG_PATH + "ODBC Data Sources");
        if (datasourcesKey == null) throw new Exception("ODBC Registry key for datasources does not exist");
        datasourcesKey.SetValue(dsnName, driverName);

        // Create new key in odbc.ini with dsn name and add values
        var dsnKey = Registry.LocalMachine.CreateSubKey(ODBC_INI_REG_PATH + dsnName);
        //MessageBox.Show(dsnKey.ToString());
        if (dsnKey == null) throw new Exception("ODBC Registry key for DSN was not created");
        dsnKey.SetValue("Data Source", dsnName);
        dsnKey.SetValue("Database", database);
        dsnKey.SetValue("Description", description);
        dsnKey.SetValue("Driver", driverPath);
        dsnKey.SetValue("Server", server);
        dsnKey.SetValue("User name", user);
        dsnKey.SetValue("Password", password);
        dsnKey.SetValue("Port", port);
        dsnKey.SetValue("Trusted_Connection", trustedConnection ? "Yes" : "No");
    }