You might check out Knoppix. If your app will run on Linux you could create a full bootable Knoppix CD with everything installed - then they can play around all they want and just reboot to reset everything. I am not sure if there is a Knoppix distro that can run within Windows.
I do video demos. I know that doesn't allow the user to play but you can really show off the tool in a controlled manner. Check Instant Demo at
http://www.instant-demo.com/ - I bought it recently and love it. It even makes Flash versions so you can put them up on your web site.
-Aaron
On 6/7/06, Scott Marlowe < smarlowe@g2switchworks.com> wrote: On Wed, 2006-06-07 at 03:01, Andy Shellam wrote:
> > Hello!
> >
> > Is it possible to have a CD with database and postgres binaries
> > (win32), which can be directly run (without any installation) ? Or if it
> > is impossible to be run from read-only media, to have it as
> > self-extracting archive, which can be run from any user account ?
> > The goal is to have some demonstration CD with some viewer, database and
> > postgres engine, which can be easily run by any windows user without
> > installation.
> >
> > best regards
> > Jarek
> >
> You won't be able to run it all off CD no, as Postgres requires
> log/transaction files etc to be written to. It also requires a service
> user/data directory so it would have to be installed.
>
> If you don't require the functionality etc of Postgres (and haven't
> developed your solution yet) you might be better off looking at something
> like SQLlite, which uses flat-files.
Actually there is a live pg cd distro out there somewhere. I've got a
copy of it I can reseed the torrent if anyone wants it.
I'm sure it's a bit out of date by now, but it's a pretty cool little
trick.