I'm using the MVC Code First approach to create a SQL Compact database (from WebConfig: data source=|DataDirectory|MailBoxDB.sdf). The .sdf file should get created automatically, and it does if I manually create the App_Data folder on the web server (Windows Server 2008). However, I'm trying to automate the deployment process and I want to eliminate this manual step. I'm using MSDeploy to create the deployment package. Is it a permissions issue that prevents IIS (7.5) from creating the App_Data folder on its own? If so, which settings should I be focusing on? Any ideas?
I had a similar scenario (generally more complex, although without a database in App_Data). I pieced together several SO questions and found a solution which I've posted on my question on the same topic. Take a look at my answer and hopefully it helps.
Related
I did the following steps:
I have created a new Umbraco instance by using the nuget package and visual studio.
I have deployed to Azure, using Azure DB as backend.
Installed the articulate package.
Added my project to version control (including App_Plugins folder, articulate dlls and so on).
I am able delete the umbraco installation and I can restore it completely from version control including Articulate.
Now I am starting to add content, articles, pictures and so on.
Think I do not need to backup the whole folder on the web server. I am doing regular backups of my Azure DB and I need some folders which are also filled with new content, like
media (filling with pictures which I am adding to my articles)
App_Plugins (keeping installed packages in umbraco)
App_Data/packages (file directory for installed packages)
App_Data/umbraco.config (keeping some content for Articulate)
So, is this everything I need to be able to restore the whole system by using the version control part, azure db backup and the listed folders?
Ideally for data/contents you should backup media and App_Data folders. However, if you want to backup Umbraco site (including cache files) then I would recommend App_Plugins, App_Data, Bin, Config, Umbraco & Umbraco_Client folders.
Hope this information helps!
Basically I follow the approach as described in the question. I have added the following files and folders to the Visual Studio project and then later to version control (I have just expanded the more interesting folders which are not part of the project file by default, but needed when you redeploy the solution from scratch):
As described the backend is hosted on Azure SQL.
Open Live Writer makes it very easy to host article content on another ftp server.
By following this approach it is very easy to redeploy the complete solution, e.g. for umbraco upgrades or major changes on the site.
I'm developing a ADF Fusion Web Application in JDeveloper 12. After the creation of the project I took a look at the file system and a bunch of directories were created.
Can anyone tell me what the .adf folder is good for? I can't find anything about it in the Oracle Docs. I'm developing with git and I'd like to know if I have to version this directory, too.
Thanks in advance!
Inside the above mentioned folder can be found two files: adf-config.xml and connections.xml. For an overview of their usage you can take a look at these links:
Oracle ADF XML File Appendix and Web Center. In both of them it states that there are stored application-level setting during design time, which can be used later during the deployment process (it seems quite important though :) ). So, even if you delete that folder it should be recreated if you make any changes and redeploy the application, BUT, if it is there it means it should be there (typical Oracle politics ;) ). So even if you are really in need of their settings (such as modify connection details to point to production server instances) it should be versioned as well.
I'm using svn, and it does version it automatically.
Hope this helps.
ADF creates several files and folders that are needed by the project.
It creates them when the project uses a functionality that needs those files.
In .adf/META-INF/ you can find adf-config.xml & connections.xml which are Application Level Settings.
But for example src/META-INF/jazn-data.xml doesn't exist until you enable Security on your application. This file is also needed and should be on SVN/Git.
ADF also creates some temporary files and folders that shouldn't be on Git/SVN.
Like: .data/.
Depending on what technologies you use from the ADF stack (ADF BC, ADF Model, ADF Controller, ADF Faces), you should understand what files and folders are created.
If you have searched for .adf/ in the official Documentation you would have found your answers.
ADF by default creates .adf and .data file, .adf file you can say is for holding various info related to your workspace in IDE i.e the connections that its having with Database, META-INF info used for customization purpose.
& .data support your MDS functionality.
we can always delete it but our Jdev will create it automatically, whenever we rebuild our application.
I have an SQL 2008 database project in Visual Studio 2010 that is sync'ed on a regular basis from a schema comparison during the development phase. This same project is also under TFS source control. I have two environments, Debug and Production. Each environment is a single machine that runs both IIS and SQL Server. The production environment however has different data and log paths for the database D:\Data\ and E:\Logs\ versus my development server at the standard c:\program files\sql....\data.
What I'm trying to do is setup the way I transact my deployments from the debug to production environments. I've gotten WebDeploy 2.1 setup and I build my deployment packages in Visual Studio via the right-click context menu on the website project. I want to manually copy deployment packages to the production server via RDP, so there's no over the wire concerns here. The deployment package settings are setup to include all databases configured in Package/Publish SQL tab. In the Package/Publish SQL tab I don't pull data from data/schema from an existing database because I want to deploy from the SQL database project instead. So I just point to the pre-generated .sql script file located in my database project's /sql/release folder. To top it off, I generate the .sql script in the post-build events in the SQL project via VSDBCMD.exe /dd:- /a:Deploy /manifest:... so that a simple solution rebuild all, then website project deploy ensures I always have the latest .sql script in the deployment package.
This is great and all, but I have a major problem here I can't seem to overcome. It has to do with the database data and log files paths being different from debug to production environments. I actually receive an exception during the WebDeploy in IIS on the production server that says it can't find c:\programs files...\MyDatabase.mdf file. And what's scarey is after this exception, the entire database is deleted. The empty databases I create right before doing the deployment. Happen both times I tried messing around with it. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I'm hoping I could find a reliable solution to this.
I have been feverishly looking for a way to change the paths during a deployment and have found many places that mention changing the paths in the *.sqlfiles.sql files under Schema Objects\Database level objects\Storage\Files because the path it tries to deploy to is the path specified in those because of the Schema Comparisons and Writes from the Debug SQL server database. Changing the paths here will work temporarily, until I do my next schema comparison and write, then the sqlfiles.sql files will get overwritten with the info from the Debug database again. And I don't want to have to remember to never update these files during a schema comparison because any mistake has the potential to delete the production database.
I think my salvation lies in my Release.sqlcmdvars file. It's a tease actually, I can see a place I "could" type the default database path, but it appears to a read-only field as it mentions "Location where database files are created by default (set when you deploy)." It would be grand if I could specify the paths here. Is there any way at all to specify the path in a variable here that would override the paths from the *.sqlfiles.sql files?
In the solution where I work at, there are two custom variables in the sqlcmdvars called Path1 and Path2 that I thought were reserved names that do such that. However, this doesn't work in my solution and the difference between the two solutions are the other solution gets deployed via TFS build controller. Doing the TFS build controller route isn't an option really because I opted out to save money while using a third party source control service.
Any help with this would be great. I have even gone so far as to create separate *.sqlfiles.sql files for debug and release and configured the dbproj file to use one or the other depending on the Configuration, but this doesn't seem to be working either. Also, using the custom PATH1 variable in the sqlfile.sql file like FILENAME = '$(PATH1)\Cameleon_log.ldf', doesn't work either. I seriously think it shouldn't be this difficult. Am I missing something simple here??
Thanks!
Okay, this was an exercise in futility. Apparently with out syncing with the target database during the script generation the script would be exactly what is needed to build the database from scratch. Even if I could override the file paths, the deployment would complain about database objects already existing. I needed to specify the connection string of the target database in the deploy settings so a comparison is done during the script generation and only the relevant differences are added to the script. I really wanted to avoid exposing my production SQL server to the outside world, but it is what it is. No need to override the paths anymore because it looks the database file paths are conveniently ignored during this comparison!!
I am researching one-click deployment with Visual Studio 2010, the current deployment process involves zipping up the contents of the IIS folder and taking a backup of the current database before completing the remaining manual deployment steps. This allows us to roll back a deployment, I need to retain the essence of this process if not the specifics.
Is there a way of automating this with MSDeploy?
You can have MSDeploy execute a batch file that backs up the IIS directory (see example)
You can also write some SQL, put it in a .sql file, execute the SQL script in the batch file as well. See this example to at least get a start. It is for SQL server, but if you are not using that then hopefully the database you are using has something similar.
Finally I found the answer, thank you to kniemczak for posting the information about how to backup IIS and SQL Server from the command line.
Automating ASP.NET MVC deployments using Web Deploy
Web Deploy runCommand Provider
It seems the following:
msdeploy.exe
-verb:sync -source:runCommand='C:\Scripts\Backup.cmd'
-dest:auto,computername=192.168.0.1
Should cover my needs.
I am trying to deploy an application using ClickOnce. The problem is, I am saving user generated files in the application's working directory. Now when the user installs the next version of the application, his old files will no longer be available to him. What is the best workaround for this problem - or does this mean I have to roll my own installer!
thanks!
Look into using isolated storage rather than the application's working directory.
This post should help you out.
When Windows Vista came out and developers could no longer store data in Program Files, Microsoft recommended using LocalApplicationData. We store a lot of cached data there, under a folder with our application's name. I wrote a blog entry showing exactly how to do this if you're interested. I call it Where do I put my data to keep it safe from ClickOnce updates?