MDAC distribution in the real world

If you look at MSDN, you can find docs that list all the various installs that included various versions of MDAC (like 2.1 is in IE5 and 2.5 is in Win2K, etc.).  What I'd really like to know though, is what percentage of various versions you can find in the wild.  Something like google's zeitgeist would be great.

Anyone know of such a thing?  Anyone have any experience, even anecdotal, with this?

I'm trying to avoid having to include the MDAC distribution in my install, but also don't want to have to pick an ancient one.

David
Thursday, February 5, 2004

The surest way is to look which version of MDAC comes with each OS version.  Windows 98 SE is the first that has a reasonable version of MDAC: 2.1.  I've seen quite a few companies that specify Windows 98 SE as the minimum version, although I'm not sure that's wise.  My own software will work on Windows 98, too; if the installer finds that MDAC 2.x isn't installed yet it will download and install it.

As for higher versions: you probably won't need them.  Do you have any specific reason to require a version of MDAC above 2.1?

Oren
Thursday, February 5, 2004

I can probably use 2.1.  I haven't tried yet.  I just need to get my hands on a clean box.  So far, the ones I've tried already had 2.5 or later.

Regardless, I'd still like to get an idea of the versions in the wild.  No developer box will have anything less than 2.5, so it'd be safer to ship with that, but I don't want to require that download.

David
Thursday, February 5, 2004

Looking at DLL Help (hell?) database tells you what version of certain files shipped with what.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=/servicedesks/fileversion/dllinfo.asp&SD=MSDN&FR=0

It looks like MDAC 2.5 shipped with WinME, Win2K, Office 2000 and Access 2000.

So MDAC 2.5 should be on just about every machine except Win95/98 with just Office 97

DJ
Thursday, February 5, 2004

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