Update: A Tumbleweed Tech explained to me that there are two kinds of Secure FTP. Corrections below.
One of the features of my company's new infrastructure architecture is the elimination of the use of FTP. One business unit uses Tumbleweed SecureTransport, which supports secure FTP, as their standard, but even with that business unit, a great deal of plain old FTP is used. The new architecture provides a shared SFTP resource. Not knowing much about the protocol I did a little investigation.
It appears that there are two flavors of Secure FTP: FTP/S, FTP over SSL, and SFTP, FTP over SSH. SecureTransport supports both on Solaris but only FTP/S on Windows until late 2005. The new architecture will be using SecureTransport on Solaris. Here are some links to guide thee:
Introduction:
Secure FTP 101 (2002)
FAQ sorting out the differences of FTP over SSH, SSL/TLS (says FTPS is better)
Specification:
RFC 2228 Secure FTP extensions
FTP/TLS Proposed Standard (Announcement, incredibly dated yesterday February 24, 2005)
Lots of details on FTPS here.
API:
FTPS component by /n software
SFTP component by /n software
Installer links to choose by
Since my company is moving to an outsourced infrastructure, may groups now are having to deal with creating installation packages. Early on I decided that getting my arms around which of InstallShield and Wise we should endorse/standardize on. Unfortunately I haven't had the time while I've been an acting Enterprise Architect for one of the groups. The clamor has begun however. While I don't have time to do inventory and analysis of the two products and our use of them in our company, I did find a few links to investigate by.
I have heard of Wise being chosen for it's Visual Studio integration and excellent support. Any more direction or (best case) a side by side comparison, Please email me so I can post your comments. (Sorry, I had to turn off comments because of massive spam - Click Contact in My Links.)
Buyout comparison:
http://forum.installsite.net/index.php?showtopic=10168
Wise reviews:
http://www.fawcette.com/vsm/2005_02/magazine/departments/firstlooks/
http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=9960
InstallShield reviews:
http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=10290
InstallShield Awards:
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Windows/Article/ArticleID/43432/43432.html
http://www.installshield.com/news/awards.asp?id=843
Creating an MSI custom action dll:
http://www.codeproject.com/tips/msicustomaction.asp