Automated Updates Suggestions

Question

We are currently looking at modifying the update process for our application, there are many possible ways to do this however I will give a little background first. We are currently running a MVVM WPF / Silverlight application, which has a SQL Server 2008 R2 database running locally and online. We currently have an update process which checks online for an update and then launches an updater program to elevate the permissions ahead of running the MSI or MSP patch files to apply the update.

Unfortunately due to the setup of most of our clients we find that most users struggle with access rights as their local administrators aren't always available. This has led us to looking at alternative approaches.

Our ideal situation would be to have a process run silently in the background under a system user account, which would check the server periodically for updates. When an update was deemed to be available the current user should be informed that an update is available and asked if they wish to download it (There is also discussion of a silent download with a user clicking to run the update when ready). The process could then run a UI to show the downloads in progress, it would again be ideal if this was displayed in the notification area of the Toolbar. At the end of this process it should then run the MSI file under raised permissions to allow the user to update the software without Administrator privileges.

The initial install of the software would be performed by an administrator who would be made aware of this full automated update process.

So my question is:

What is the best practice approach to performing this kind of process? What suggestions would you have for coding this, for example should we have an application or run the process off Tasks or Services? Is there software specifically designed to solve this problem? Is there a specific Windows account which is designed for such as purpose? Any examples and Pros and Cons of different practices.

I realise this is a very vague question but I would prefer to follow a recommended approach as opposed to reinventing the wheel.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I might be off track here but why not make your application a Click Once application. That way every time your app starts it can check if there is a newer version and prompt the end user to install the updated version.

If there did happen to be a problem with a new version then the end user would be able to roll back to a previous version.

We have used this approach with several WPF applications to great effect.

We tend to publish to a folder on the development machine and then ftp to the public server.