how to create a setup for .net project with sap, sql server 2008 r2 and .net framework

Question

I have created a .NET application which is a WPF application and it consists of database and reports. What i want to do is to create a setups which consists of .Net Framework, SQL Server 2008 R2 and SAP Crystal Reports. All of these should be in a single setup. If any of these exists in OS so that should be skipped and which are not existing should be installed. If the software are not present so they should be download first and then installed.

What is the best solution and steps for it?

If reference are available similar to my problem please post their links.

If you down vote my question, please tell me the reason for it as to be careful next time.

Answer 1

What is the best solution and steps for it?

Just document these software packages as prerequisites and provide your users some documentation as to where to download and how to install them. We use an almost identical software stack for our applications at my current place of employment, and this is what we do. There are a few reasons for this:

1. Error Handling A lot of things can go wrong when installing these applications. SQL Server especially has a lot of prerequisites and configuration requirements that are too numerous to account for all of the things that could possibly go wrong. Crystal Reports also might be problematic.
2. Legal In order to redistribute software you need to have the right to do so. .NET and CR both provide redistributables, SQL Server 2008 R2 Express used to require you to register in order to redistribute, however, according to this question it looks like they stopped offering that and now it is built into the 2012 license.
3. Control Let's say you figure out how to get this installer working, but lets say one of the software packages needs to be updated to fix a security problem. At the same time they change the installer logic, and it breaks your installer procedure. Because these installers are outside of your control keeping a consistent installation process can be very time intensive.

Now I realize the end goal is to have a good user experience, run one installer and everything necessary gets installed. However, the potential for this to break and cause problems and give a really negative user experience, in my opinion, far outweighs any potential user experience gain that might be earned by a unified installer.

If you are really dead set on doing this, I'd recommend just googling it. Generally by searching something like crystal reports silent install or sql server unattended install you can usually find instructions on how to supply the proper command line options to get it to install without any user input.