I know there are ways of installing SQL Express from the command line. This link gives an example of that. There is another example in here..
When I make this change in my application:
then when I deploy my application and install it on a computer that does not have that prerequisite I notice that the installer downloads that prerequisite:
If I cancel the installation and then launch the exe file that the installer downloaded then I will see:
If I do not cancel the installer, I believe that the installer then goes ahead and installs SQL Server Express with a technique similar to the one posted by the first two links link 1, link 2.
Where does Visual Studio stores the parameters that are being passed to the exe that it downloads in order to create a silent install? will it be possible to modify those parameters that are being passed to the exe? also I know which file (prerequisites) did visual studio (installer) downloads because I found it on the computer when installing my application but how can I tell from what link does visual studio downloads the prerequisites? I know it depends on the OS version and architecture of the operating system where the application is being installed.
Anyways I am just curious about the last paragraph. In short, I just want to modify the parameters that are being passed to the prerequisites of SQL Server Express 2008. Those parameters should be somewhere in the application that I deployed. Or maybe they get downloaded from Microsoft.
On a 64-bit machine the SQL Server Express bootstrapper is typically located in the following folder:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bootstrapper\Packages\SqlExpress2008\enLook inside the package.xml file for the command line parameters for the installer.