The MSI Importer Workspace

Launching the MSI Importer

To launch the MSI Importer:

1. In the SAI Editor, select the Import Data from MSI from the Tools menu.

   A File Open dialog is displayed.

2. Navigate to and select the installer file (this is either the setup.exe or the .msi file depending on how the publisher published the application).

   For further information on which file to choose, see Locating the MSI and Setup Files for Different Application Installations.

   The Import MSI Installer workspace is displayed.

   The Import MSI Installer window is non-modal. This means you can have it displayed while working in the SAI Editor. Position the two windows on your screen so that you can work with both at the same time.

   The MSI Importer window consists of four tabs.

   1. Summary
   2. MSI Database
   3. Actions
   4. MSI Reading Log

   Note The Actions and MSI Reading Log tabs are optional and will be visible only if there is something to show in them. Whether they appear or not depends on a particular MSI used.

Summary Tab

The Summary page shows information extracted from the MSI file.

Product Details

• Product Code

  The product code is an ID that is the main identifier for an application or product.

• Upgrade Code

  This is an identifier used by the MSI system to determine which installed products are affected by a given upgrade.

• Manufacturer

  The software application publisher

• Name

  The name of the application. This is the application’s install string.

• Version

  The version of the application

• Package Code

  The package code is an ID identifying a particular Windows Installer package. It associates an .msi file with an application or product.

• Product Code

  The product code is an ID that is the main identifier for an application or product.

• Upgrade Code

  This is an identifier used by the MSI system to determine which installed products are affected by a given upgrade.

• Manufacturer

  The software application publisher

• Name

  The name of the application. This is the application’s install string.

• Version

  The version of the application

• Package Code

  The package code is an ID identifying a particular Windows Installer package. It associates an .msi file with an application or product.

Shortcut information

Lists the shortcuts this installer created and shows the targets under each shortcut.

The following information about the shortcut is given:

• Name of the shortcut
• The Directory the shortcut points to
• The file pointed to
• The Component to which the file belongs
• A description of the shortcut command
• Any arguments applied if relevant
• The Working directory

The Go to button is only enabled when you select a Feature or if a shortcut’s target exists in only one feature and you select the shortcut. If you select a shortcut in this pane and click the Go to button you will be automatically redirected to the MSI Database tab and the file will be highlighted.

Warnings

Warnings are provided whenever actions are found that require further examination. You will need to examine the entries associated with the action warnings and decide whether they are files that need to be taught to the application and what relationship they have with the application. Examine the warnings by clicking on the links in the bottom pane. You will be automatically directed to the appropriate place in the Actions tab.

MSI Database Tab

The MSI Database tab has several components:

• The Features and Components tree
• The Files pane
• The Version Information pane
• Toolbar

• The Features and Components Tree

  The Features and Components tree displays a tree view of the features and (optionally) their child components.

  

  This displays a tree structure of the features and (optionally) components contained in the installer. The following icons are used to differentiate between the three types of node:

  • Feature Node
  • Component Node
  • Icon Node

  Icons are stored in different locations. They are extracted and placed into the Icon node.

  A pop-up menu item (Import Files) is displayed when you right-click the selected Feature Node. This option allows you to import the files contained in the Feature Node into the version selected in the SAI Editor.

The Files Pane

The Files pane lists the files contained in the Feature or Component currently selected in the Features and Components tree.

The Files pane displays a list of the files belonging to the currently selected node.

If the node is a Feature and the Show Component Node toolbar option is not selected, the Feature will contain the files that belong to all of its (now invisible) Component nodes. You can find further information about the toolbar options on page 310.

Due to the legacy of MS DOS, the file name is stored in the MSI in two versions.

• The old-style MSDOS 8.3 format (with eight characters, a full stop, and then a three character extension)
• The more recent mixed-case long version

Both of these names are displayed in the Files pane separated by a ‘|’. For example:

IMAGES~1.EXE|ImageSlicer.exe

If the MSI Importer was unable to extract a file from the installer in order to scan it then that file’s icon will have a red ‘No Entry’ Symbol superimposed on it to indicate this.

You can find more information about why the file could not be extracted in the Messages tab.

Pop-Up Menu

Two pop-up menu items (Find Files and Import Files) are displayed when you right-click a file.

• Find File

The SAI Editor will search its database for other occurrences of the selected file. The SAI Editor’s Search in SAI dialog is displayed.

• Import Files

This option allows you to import selected files into the version selected in the SAI Editor.

The Version Information Pane

The Version Information pane displays the version information from the currently selected file.

The Version Information pane displays data that the MSI Importer has extracted from the file currently selected in the Files pane. If no information was extracted from the file, this pane will be blank.

The information in this pane is exactly the same as the version information that the Scanners extract from a file during a normal scan of a computer. It is commonly used to determine the original publisher of the file so that the file relationship to the application (main, associated or third party) can be determined.

Toolbar

There are two types of buttons available from the toolbar:

• Functional Buttons
• Option Buttons

Functional Buttons

There are two functional buttons in the MSI Importer toolbar:

Find File

Clicking the Find File button while a file is highlighted will cause the SAI Editor to search for other occurrences of the selected file. The Search for Files window is displayed.

Add Selected Files to a Version

Clicking the button imports the selected files into the version selected in the SAI Editor.

It has the same effect as dragging the currently selected item from the Features and Components tree or the Files pane (whichever was last clicked) to the currently selected version node. If no version node is selected, this button will appear greyed out.

When the mouse pointer passes over an icon, a tooltip appears indicating the command corresponding to the icon.

Option Buttons

Three option buttons are also available from the toolbar. All three of the option buttons are sticky buttons.

• If the option is selected the button appears depressed
• To de-select the option, click the button again and the button returns to its normal state

Hide Features With No Files

Enabling this option causes the SAI Editor to only show those Features that contain files. Features without files in an installer are typically containers for registry entries, shortcuts and services, and as such are not used to teach to the application library. They therefore appear empty in the tree and can safely be ignored. This option makes them invisible.

When enabled, the MSI importer queries the information on all Features and Components before it displays the tree. This could take some time on larger installers.

The option to remove empty Features is carried out before the option to Show only executable files. This means that if a node has only non-executable files, it will still appear in the tree even though the Show Only Executable Files option has caused it to be empty.

Show Only Executable Files

When this option is enabled only those files that were identified as executable are visible. Further, only the files displayed will be added during imports. This is the default setting, as non-executable files should not be added.

Show Component Nodes

When this option is enabled, the Features and Components tree will contain a node for every Component. This is a true reflection of how the MSI-based Installer is structured internally. That is, a Feature does not contain files directly when this option is applied. All of the Features contain Components, and those Components in turn contain the files. This is useful for determining the origin of a particular file.

When the Show Component Nodes option is disabled, the Component nodes are not shown. All of the files contained in the Component nodes are placed directly under the Feature node. While this is a less accurate view of the installer, it is more user-readable. You do not have to click the hundreds of Component nodes to view the files a Feature would install.

In the example above, note how the files that were shown for each individual component now appear with the parent feature of those components.

Actions Tab

This page lists the actions that the MSI Installer invokes during the installation process. It is necessary to examine these actions in order to determine whether any of them will install files not contained in the MSI.

• Nested Installers

A nested installation action installs another Windows Installer package during a currently running installation. A nested installation action can only reinstall or remove an application that has been installed by the current application's installation package.

• Called Executables

  This page shows any actions that may install some other executable files.

• DLL Calls

  This page shows any dll calls that may have been made.

• Invoked Scripts

  This page shows any scripts that may have been invoked

MSI Reading Log Tab

The MSI Reading Log tab is used to view the log. It displays messages generated by the MSI Importer when reading the MSI-based Installer.