Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - Posts

Can .NET applications be really "no-touch" deployed?

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.
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