Deploying and setting up SQL Express 2008

Question

Looking into installing an instance of SQL Express for an app. I want to have a separate installer. (I need to run some Transact-SQL stuff afterwards)

I've been referencing this article.

It is recommended that you ship the Express package extracted on your media and then launch Setup.exe directly. To extract the Express package, run the following command.

So far I tried bundling the unpackaged SQL Setup in an MSI (using a Setup and Deployment project). The user installs, which just puts the extracted files in a folder, then in OnAfterInstall I'm the setup process. This doesn't work since SQL's Setup.exe runs some .msi files.

Answer 1

Was able to make my own executable to bootstrap the installation and use FreeExtractor to create a self-extracting zip of the setup and my bootstrapper and then run my executable at the end.