String Table and Property Cleanup Questions...

[Superfreak3]

Hi all,

I was thinking about cleaning out the string table of unused strings and I know how to use the search option for individual strings to get usage. I'm just wondering if there is a way to find unused strings in bulk so they can be deleted.

Also, at times when I add a new control, NewProperty1, 2, 3, etc is added to the Property table. I'm guessing that the only way to find if a property is used is search all tables in Direct Editor. If it only appears in the Property table, I guess I can assume its unused elsewhere and delete it. Am I on the right track with this or are there any tricks to finding unused properties in bulk?

I was also wondering - is there a setting to exclude unused strings and or properties at build time? I know that possible unused properties are making it into my install package as I can see the NewProperty1, and others in there. I'm not sure if unused strings are excluded at build time or not.

Any information, tips, etc on my intended cleanup endeavors would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks much!!

[MichaelU]

In the general case the answer is no; it's possible for any kind of custom action (or Windows Installer itself) to refer to properties for which you won't see other references in the database, and it's possible for InstallScript actions to reference strings. However if you know you're not doing things like that, searching the tables is probably good enough. In the string editor view it should be possible to search for uses of strings, but it may or may not report bulk results in a format that's useful for you. I don't think we have anything similar for properties (largely because of how many properties are read in other ways).

[Superfreak3]

I'm curious as to how many out there embark on a task such as Property and String cleanup.

The reason I wonder about it is because back when we used Wise, we ran into a problem during patching. For some reason, patches containing a few files would take sometimes 20 minutes to apply.

After some research I found that our 'string limit' was being exceeded and some process was undertaken at runtime to compensate for this. This process was what was eating up the time. I also believe the process was undertaken during both the UI and Execute phases.

My thoughts about the String table were that maybe periodic maintenance would lessen the potential for this hapening again.

Again, until that time I had not heard of or experienced any issues dealing with a packages string length.

[rguggisberg]

I hear what you are saying and have done just a bit of attempting to clean things up as you suggest. For the most part I found that the risks out weigh the benefit and have refrained from doing much cleanup. You can really make a mess for yourself and end up spending a lot of time getting back to where you were.

If you proceed with cleanup I would caution you to keep a copy of your files and then do ONLY cleanup without making any other changes so that you don't have any reconciliation to do when you find out that something you deleted was referenced by something that was not reported. If you haven't made other changes you can revert to your backup copy.