Deployment and Setup woes

[Oz]

Hi

We in our company build asp.net and MS SQL Server apps for deployment on
clients' machines. We have created an Installer class (DBInstaller) which
runs several scripts to build a database, populate it will data, etc. I
would like to be able to create a setup file, which, if the application is
NOT installed on the client computer, installs from scratch. This already
works in the MSI file we create. However, if the application DOES exist on
the target computer, i would like to set some options in VS.NET Setup
Project, not ORCA, that in the same setup file, would allow me to :

- update only those files where the files included in MSI date is greater
than the files on the client disk.

- run a different installer class (DBUpgrader), which refreshed all the SPs
and views, and optionally adds extra data to look-up tables and may add
extra fields to tables.

If the user double clicks on the setup file, where the application already
exists on their machine and the setupfile is a newer version of the setup
file, it should by default assume an upgrade is going to take place and not
that the application is to be repaired or removed. Removing the
application, means dropping the database, which by this time most likely
includes some client data. Obviously, we do not want to do this.

Setting the RemovePreviousVersions attribute within the Setup project will
remove all files and reinstall them. This is again unacceptable as we do not
want to remove the database, or most of the aspx files). We would only want
to update some aspx files, update the compiled assemblies (if applicable)
and run some update scripts on the database.

Can this be accomplished through VS.NET, or through Orca?

We are using VS.NET 2003 on Windows XP to deploye ASP.NET/VB.NET components
and SQL Server applications.We are also using the MSDE Bootstrap Loader
Configurator.

Thanks

Oz