Posts tagged .net

Deployment – Coalition Software’s Solution

May06
2008 Leave a Comment Written by Pieter van der Westhuizen

In my previous post I discussed the challenge of deploying your application.

Since then, I have been hard at work contemplating and designing a proof of concept for the ultimate deployment technique. I guess the easiest solution would be just to create a web-based application, application updates can then happen from anywhere and at anytime.

Unfortunately web-based applications aren’t always an option, so what I’ve come up with so far is a web service solution. I’m still working on the structure of the service, but basically what would happen is the following:

  • User click the "Check for Update" button in their application
  • The application connects to the web service using the following criteria:
    • Application Name
    • Application Version
      Note: Later web service version can include fields like company name, user name etc. for licensing purposes.
  • The web service takes the supplied information, and checks against a database whether a newer version for the Application exists or if the user is using the latest version.
  • If a newer version exists, it retrieves the following information about that version:
    • Version Description
    • List of changes
    • List of SQL scripts
  • The application will then download all the SQL scripts required for the release, and send the information about the release back to the client
  • Once the SQL scripts has been downloaded it will be automatically run on the client database, and the status of the script( Successful, Failed) will be reported back to the web service, in order for the support team to respond appropriately.
  • If no scripts failed, the standard click once deployment method will then be called to update the application with the latest assemblies.

So there you have it. Still a work in progress, but I think overall not a bad concept. I’ll report back on my progress as I go, maybe even throw in a demonstration.

Posted in .Net - Tagged

What about deployment?

Apr25
2008 1 Comment Written by Pieter van der Westhuizen

I’ve recently been subcontracted to write an application for a clients’ client. I have to deliver the application in a easy to install fashion, since I won’t be installing the application myself.

The problem with software deployment is that it is almost always an afterthought, so much time and effort goes into developing this great software, but hardly any time goes into planning and building an effective deployment strategy. When finally delivering the product to the client and deployment goes awry, the client starts developing second thoughts about the quality of your product.

This got me spending some time considering my deployment options in a more thorough way. Usually when I deploy an application I go to the client and install it for them, trouble shoot any installation issues and when there is a new release I either log in remotely, upload the new assemblies and update the database manually(using scripts) and everything is up to date.

In this scenario things will be a bit different as I won’t have remote access to the client machines and visiting on-site will probably not be an option. Thus I have opted to use ClickOnce deployment, with the deployment folder on a web site. This is great for dll’s and exe’s but what about database changes?

Since we have to assume that the person using the application won’t be tech-savvy enough to manually run scripts on the database(using SQL Management Studio Express, with SQL Express 2005), I have to think of a smarter way to deploy scripts on the remote database. So, I’ve come up with a solution:

In the application, there will be a button "Check for update" this button will first connect to the same ClickOnce server and download a zip file in the format _Scripts.zip i.e. CALC1.0.1_Scripts.zip. In this zip file is all the scripts required to update the database to the latest release. After the zip file is downloaded, the scripts will be extracted and run. After this is complete the normal ClickOnce update will happen. Perhaps not the most elegant approach but effective in the tests I’ve run so far.

Posted in Uncategorized - Tagged ,