October 2004 - Posts
No, not really. For No-Touch Deployment V1 (.NET Framework 1.1) you need to do an initial rollout containing the following things:
- The .NET Framework 1.1 itself
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0.1 or highter
This is actually a pre-requisite of the .NET Framework, but it limits the use of NTD to one specific browser.
- Changes to the runtime policy
Since the default permission set is very restricted and every non-trivial app definetly needs more permissions.
Initial Rollout
In an corporate environment you will have a common way how to distribute the things among the client-pc's. If you plan to make the applicaiton publically available over the Internet you have to offer a download solution (bootstrapper) for the framework and the required runtime policies.
So is there real "no-touch" deployment in .NET?
The things to remember:
- You need to install the .NET Framework (with IE and MDAC) and most likely runtime policies on the target systems.
- If these conditions are already met: you have a true No-Touch Deployment scenario.
Yesterday I was asked in an interview if No-Touch Deployment (NTD) is really usable for commercial, real-life projects; and my answer was a clear "Yes!".
Take a look at what Mark Levison at Databeacon has done:
Last week we launched what we believe to be the world's first commercial No Touch Deployment application with .NET. Read more
Although it is not really the first one out there ;-)
You know another commercial NTD app? -> Make sure you let me know!
Rockford Lhotka has build a basic, ready-to-use loader for No-Touch Deployment Applications - named "NetRun" - (with source code). You can download it here.
NetRun addresses the following issues you may encounter with no-touch deployment:
- Dynamically setting security for deployed applications
- Reading application configuration files from an ASP.NET server
- Allows you to deserialize objects into autodeployed classes
- Preventing the browser from popping up when running http://myserver/myroot/myapp.exe
Recently a customer told me he is really looking forward towards Click Once due to the fact that it comes with a bootstrapper for the .NET Framework 2.0 and the required MDAC components. Maybe you are as surprised as he was when hearing that there is a Visual Studio .NET Bootstrapper - which actually is a Visual Studio Plug-In - for the .NET Framework 1.1 and MDAC available from Microsoft.