DotNetNuke 4.5.0 - A Sneak Peek (3)

Continuing my series of blogs on the new features of DotNetNuke 4.5.0, this blog will explore in more detail the new Wizard based Installer.

In this blog I will focus on the are of the Wizard that deals with the installation of the Database scripts.  The first page we will look at is the page that allows you to configure your conenction string.

There are a few things to note here:

• The style is different from the first blog - It has been updated to better reflect the DotnetNuke.com brand.
• You can select the type of database being used (Note the Wizard also supports the Oracle DataProvider, and if this is enabled as the default, then the Database choices are different).  Changing from file to database will change the fields provided.
• There is a lot of help provided for the fields in the connection string to help you build it correctly.
• This page has a custom button in the Page Navigation allowing you to Test the connection string before continuing. Also while not apparent from this view clicking on Next when the connection string is not valid will not allow you to proceed.  In either case if ther are errors they will ALL be listed for better troubleshooting.

If the connection works selecting Next will run the Install scripts.

Again there are a few things to note

• The scripts are installed one at a time as before, and by using client callbacks and some javascript from Jon, feedback is shown in the box
• While the script are being installed a progress bar dislpays (using javascript - not an animated gif)
• The Next/Previous buttons are disabled through javascript until the script installation is complete

In order to keep these blogs to a manageable size, I will describe some of the customisation features in my next blog.