MSI Packaging Quality Control

Internal Consistency Evaluators or ICEs as they are known are a set of custom actions designed to evaluate the integrity of the MSI database. ICEs return errors. warnings. failures and information. They are designed to ensure that the windows installer database meets certain criteria. It is important that Errors. Warnings and Failures are resolved. Ignoring them will cause various issues with the package. some of which may not be apparent until the day you come to upgrade. patch or uninstall the package. by which time the package will be deployed throughout your organisation and you will have the headache of trying to resolve the problems at a later date.

How do we achieve it?

Both Wise and Installshield have their own tools to execute ICEs. The Microsoft Platform SDK includes a tool called Orca which is widely regarded as “the” tool to use when executing ICEs and is available as a free download. Using any of these tools will enable you to validate your windows installer database. Once validated you need to act on the information provided to resolve any errors and warnings. This is usually achieved by adjusting and correcting entries in the database tables. The vast majority of errors and warnings are resolvable. some are not possible to resolve due to limitations of the installer database.