Guidance: Enterprise Deployment of Web Application

[Brenden Bixler]

I would like to solicit advice on how to best deploy an enterprise ASP.NET
2.0 web application. I'm using VS 2005 and I've found Publish Web Site to be
somewhat lacking, buggy, and slow.

My application consists of 250+ (and growing daily) ASP.NET files that I'm
compiling into separate binaries (all stored in /bin). The ASP.NET front-end
files are stored in 10 different directories (and growing).

My current method of development for fixing bugs or adding new features is
as follows:

1. Fix bug or add feature request locally.
2. Compile site.
3. Manually FTP all files and binaries, directory-by-directory. (Since
compiling to binary always updates the time/date stamp, it's impossible to
transfer just those files that have changed since last compile).
4. Test in beta environment.
5. If successful, FTP to production site manually. If not, repeat above
until ready for production.

As you can imagine, this is an extremely time-consuming process. It's not
agile, nor automated and prone to keeping me working later than I'd like.

Any suggestions that you could offer in expediting deployment, especially
based on your experience, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

-Brenden

[Juan T. Llibre]

Have you considered using the Web Depolyment Project VS 2005 Add-on ?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/re...p/default.aspx

Background info:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...t_projects.asp


Juan T. Llibre, asp.net MVP
aspnetfaq.com : http://www.aspnetfaq.com/
asp.net faq : http://asp.net.do/faq/
foros de asp.net, en español : http://asp.net.do/foros/
=============== =============== =====
"Brenden Bixler" <Br***********@ discussions.mic rosoft.comwrote in message
news:2D******** *************** ***********@mic rosoft.com...

>I would like to solicit advice on how to best deploy an enterprise ASP.NET
2.0 web application. I'm using VS 2005 and I've found Publish Web Site to be
somewhat lacking, buggy, and slow.

My application consists of 250+ (and growing daily) ASP.NET files that I'm
compiling into separate binaries (all stored in /bin). The ASP.NET front-end
files are stored in 10 different directories (and growing).

My current method of development for fixing bugs or adding new features is
as follows:

1. Fix bug or add feature request locally.
2. Compile site.
3. Manually FTP all files and binaries, directory-by-directory. (Since
compiling to binary always updates the time/date stamp, it's impossible to
transfer just those files that have changed since last compile).
4. Test in beta environment.
5. If successful, FTP to production site manually. If not, repeat above
until ready for production.

As you can imagine, this is an extremely time-consuming process. It's not
agile, nor automated and prone to keeping me working later than I'd like.

Any suggestions that you could offer in expediting deployment, especially
based on your experience, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

-Brenden

[Brenden Bixler]

I have. Unfortunately, it's a pretty weak solution. For instance, I'm a huge
fan of merging all of the assemblies into a single dll. However, it doesn't
work if you have a duplicate method. The verbose messaging doesn't identify
where this occurs and frankly, across 250+ files, I've probably got a few
methods called Update() that perform vastly different functions locally. The
only way I can get my project to compile using this add-on is to have it
generate a different assembly for each file.

Am I missing something? I concede that I might not be using it correctly.

-Brenden

"Juan T. Llibre" wrote:

Have you considered using the Web Depolyment Project VS 2005 Add-on ?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/re...p/default.aspx

Background info:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...t_projects.asp


Juan T. Llibre, asp.net MVP
aspnetfaq.com : http://www.aspnetfaq.com/
asp.net faq : http://asp.net.do/faq/
foros de asp.net, en español : http://asp.net.do/foros/
=============== =============== =====
"Brenden Bixler" <Br***********@ discussions.mic rosoft.comwrote in message
news:2D******** *************** ***********@mic rosoft.com...

I would like to solicit advice on how to best deploy an enterprise ASP.NET
2.0 web application. I'm using VS 2005 and I've found Publish Web Site to be
somewhat lacking, buggy, and slow.

My application consists of 250+ (and growing daily) ASP.NET files that I'm
compiling into separate binaries (all stored in /bin). The ASP.NET front-end
files are stored in 10 different directories (and growing).

My current method of development for fixing bugs or adding new features is
as follows:

1. Fix bug or add feature request locally.
2. Compile site.
3. Manually FTP all files and binaries, directory-by-directory. (Since
compiling to binary always updates the time/date stamp, it's impossible to
transfer just those files that have changed since last compile).
4. Test in beta environment.
5. If successful, FTP to production site manually. If not, repeat above
until ready for production.

As you can imagine, this is an extremely time-consuming process. It's not
agile, nor automated and prone to keeping me working later than I'd like.

Any suggestions that you could offer in expediting deployment, especially
based on your experience, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

-Brenden

[Aemca]

where this occurs and frankly, across 250+ files, I've probably got a few

methods called Update() that perform vastly different functions locally.
The

This isn't a problem as long as these aren't in the same partial class /
class.

Remember and even then you can place them in another namespace etc.

automating the compiling can be done by things like, writing a .vbs script
which calls the compiler from the command line.

Making a nant script or a msbuild script etc.