FormTool

Techniques: Software: FormTool

FormTool (by IMSI) is a Windows application for creating database-linked smart computer forms and reports, with a focus on live forms filled out on the computer. These forms can be automated to some degree, and indeed one person developed a complete reservation system for hotels (BookEm) using only FormTool 5.0. In that respect, FormTool may be usable as a replacement for more expensive development platforms such as Microsoft Access.

Deployment appears to be an issue, however, as there does not appear to be any obvious support for automated installation of the form-filler executable (despite the fact that licenses for unlimited copying of the form-filler executable are available) so that the end-user can automatically install both (a) any developed applications requiring FormTool and (b) the FormTool form-filler required to run them.

Notes

Woozle 15:37, 1 May 2005 (CDT)

We are in the process of contacting IMSI to see if they can provide any support for deployment. In the meantime, I'm making some progress replicating the install process by hand; the main application seems only to need a set of DLLs in order to run, though it may turn out that proper setup of the registry is needed for things to work right.

Looking at the FormTool 5.0 install CD, you see some setup-related executables (autorun.exe, instmsia.exe, instmsiw.exe, setup.exe, setup.ini), what may be an encoded install script of some kind (FormTool v5.msi), and an archive file (Data.Cab) which is readable by WinZip 9.0 SR-1. This last file appears to contain the actual files needed to make FormTool run.

Each file in Data.Cab is prefixed by a 5-digit code plus a hyphen; I don't know what the code means. By attempting to run F3063-FormTool.exe, I was able to determine that copying the following files (shown as renamed) to a separate folder and removing the first 6 characters from their names will allow FormTool.exe to load:

FormTool.exe
CodeBar.dll
CTOCRC32.DLL
FTFrm.dll
GrPropts.dll
IMSIctrl.dll
Inspector.dll
Password.dll
Rotr.dll
Utils.dll
XControls.dll
zlib.dll

The next steps are: (1) Find the "form-filler" executable and run the same test, to see what files are needed to make it load; (2) Attempt to actually load the application which uses the form-filler, to see if anything further is needed.