July 13, 2011
Blog ArchivesDocumenting Key End-to-End Deployment Scenarios
The IIS Web Deployment Tool (Web Deploy) and the deployment features introduced in Visual Studio 2010 enable you to automate many deployment tasks, but we have heard you all that many common scenarios not yet documented fully. We are addressing …
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Video on Web Deployment using Visual Studio 2010 and MSDeploy
Back in November I participated in Virtual Tech Days which is an online conference presented by Microsoft. In the session I discussed the enhancements to web deployment using Visual Studio 2010 and MSDeploy. Some of the topics which I covered includ: w…
XDT (web.config) Transforms in non-web projects
One of the really cool features that we shipped for Visual Studio 2010 was web.config (XDT) transformations . Because the transformations are so simple and straightforward one of the first questions that someone asks after using it is “how can I use …
ASP.NET Web Application: Publish/Package Tokenizing Parameters
Today I just saw a question posted on stackoverflow.com asking Why are some Web.config transforms tokenised into SetParameters.xml and others are not ? Let me give some background on this topic for those who are not aware of what the question is. With Visual Studio 2010 when you package your application using the Build Deployment Package context menu option, see image below. When build the package by default the package will be created in obj\{Configuration}\Package\{ProjectName}.zip where {Configuration} is the current build configuration, and {ProjectName} is the name of the project. So in this case I since I’m building with Debug and the project name is MvcApplication1 the package will be placed at obj\Debug\Package\MvcApplication1…(read more)
Web Deploy: How to see the command executed in Visual Studio during publish
I just saw a post on Twitter asking the question Is there any easy way to see the underlying MSBuild command when building in VS2010? Want to see the MSDeploy params. @ wdeploy ? One thing to know is that when you publish from Visual Studio, by default we use the MSDeploy (AKA Web Deployment Tool) Object Model in order to perform the deployment. We do this for performance and other reasons. Because of this there is no real msdeploy.exe command that is being issued. You can however change that behavior. This is controlled by an MSBuild property UseMSDeployExe which is false by default. In this case since Troy wants to see the command we will need to set that property to false. There are 2 ways in which you can do this. You can set it in the project…(read more)
Web Deploy: IIS6 to IIS7 Migrations + Link Extensions
Recently I was having a conversation with one of Web Deploy (MSDeploy) users and an interesting scenario came up. He essentially wanted to move his site from IIS 6.0 to IIS 7 and wanted to consider Web Deploy to do this. In addition he actually was fine with just xCopy-ing the site’s content from IIS6 server to IIS7 server as it was almost 6GB+ in size and trying to create a zip package for it was not most the optimal way of using resources, nevertheless creating a zip package using Web Deploy for just the IIS configuration is what was certainly desirable due to ease of portability & use. I thought this would be a good opportunity to write a quick note to share with you that migration from IIS 6 to IIS 7 was one of the original…(read more)
We are Hiring!!
Our team is focused on delivering the ASP.NET framework as well as the tools required for web development including Visual Web Developer Express and web application development part of Visual Studio. If you have the skills and the passion, want to work on web based technologies, and you’re looking for challenge in a fun and fast environment you should consider joining us! The Web Platform and Tools team is looking for smart, highly motivated and experienced testers who can help our team test the next generation of tools and runtime technologies. The candidates who fill these roles are expected to become an expert at building, testing and using web based technologies. The ideal candidate should be a self-starter and have the ability to…(read more)
An example of packaging web application containing database upgrade SQL file
A few months ago, we have a blog talking about extending the web publishing pipeline to package database project deployed SQL file. In this blog, I’ll show step by step example of packaging web application with SQL Server database upgrade SQL file using Visual Studio 2010. This way, we can generate a web package with incremental SQL script to certain database version. The scenario may help distributions of a web upgrade package which needs to be installed on many different locations, each with their own SQL server database. 1. Create a Web Application Project 2. Add a new “SQL Server 2008 Database Project” to the solution 3. Prepare a development database, such as my test1 database as the following: 4. Right click our…(read more)
A practical example of using web application deployment package with IIS7
When a zip package is built from VS2010 web application UI (via Build Deployment Package command), or through command line (msbuild myproject.csproj /t:package), a few files are generated in the destination folder. Here’s some brief description: File Name Description myApp.deploy-readme.txt Read me file of how to use myApp.deploy.cmd. myApp.deploy.cmd The auto generated command file which can be used in many situations. Check MSDN topic for details. myApp.SetParameters.xml The parameter file that user can modify to affect deployed IIS application, such as IIS application name, connection string etc. Check MSDN topic for more details. myApp.SourceManifest.xml The source manifest file that VS uses to compile the package via web deploy…(read more)
Parameterization vs. Web.Config Transformation
I was recently asked about being able to change values of different variables like ConnectionStrings, Installation physical directory, app Settings etc during install time rather than build time, so I thought it might be worth while to de-mystify the concepts around Web.Config Transforms and Parameterization… Web.Config Transformation Geeks say Web.Config Transformation is a great feature of Web Deploy (aka MsDeploy), well the first part about being a great feature is true 
but it is important to note that Web.Config Transformation is not a Web Deploy feature but it instead is a VS 2010 only feature. Web.Config Transformation is connected with Build configuration of MSBuild/VS/Team Build etc… Its XML transformation engine is wrapped…(read more)
