I am developing an online internal web portal (like users write tests, provide document links to study, completing a study roadmap, admin user to view ststistics, etc). It caters some 150 users. I have planned to use ASP .NET with c# in Visual Studio 2008 on windows xp. I am implementing using Forms and NOT MVC since I feel at home with forms.
I do not want to use windows authentication since each user will have many attributes related to him and so it will be easy using a database. Security is not an issue since it is being used internally only.
I have only a fair knowledge about ASP and C# and VS 2008.
Now my questions:
Can I use MS SQL server database that is built in in VS 2008?( I cannot ask for external databases)
Can I export the website totally along with the databases to IIS server running in some other computer? How?
Do I need to export databases separately or provide a database creation script like PHP?
(I have more questions. Will update once I start off).
(This is my first .net web app. so can i know where i can find login scripts, pagination, examples, and pretty much all the stuff)
edit: which to use? New website or New Webapplication?
You can pretty much use any database, but it seems from your requirements that you want to look closer towards something like SQLExpress, SQL Server Compact Edition or SQLLite.
Can I export the website totally along
with the databases to IIS server
running in some other computer? How?
Your database will be shipped along with your application if you use one of the database options that I have specified above.
Do I need to export databases
separately or provide a database
creation script like PHP?
See my comment above, the database will exist when you deploy your website to IIS. It's a physical file that will be in your APP_DATA folder.
You can use:
MySQL. The reason: It has no space or memory limit!
SQL Server or SQL CE. These are both alike. They just differ in slite functions, and also the storage!
The SQL CE allows you to have 4GB. But the SQL Server lets you have 10GB.
So it depends on your work!
Also, I wanted to point out one error in a post, that the SQL CE is present in App_Data, Correct! But the SQL Server is placed somewhere like:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.SQLEXPRESS\MSSQL\here_will_it_be
And yes, you can migrate it to wherever you want to place it. I mean if you want to upload it to a hosting server, you can upload it using Web Deploy! Or what ever service. When downloading you will have to repeat same process!
I hope you are doing good with your first web app! :)
Related
I'm new to Asp.Net.
I want to install SQL Server Express on a different Windows PC than the one the site will be hosted on. I am planning on using MVC5 and Web Api.
I have seen that one can use LocalDB but this will not work for me as I want to run queries on the DB from my side. Is this possible ?
As far as I understand IIS should also be running on the server/domain that is hosting the ASP.NET.
Or should I just install everything on a single windows machine and go from there as I'm a single developer.
Lastly, I can maybe connect to my existing MySql db from the asp.net project but I am not sure how difficult this will be.
Sorry if these are a silly questions. I'm still finding my feet in this area and I need to find them fast .
Thanks for any feedback.
I want to create a desktop application, I normally work on web based applications so have very little knowledge about creating console applications using .Net and visual studio.
So now in this application I'l also be using database connectivity and stored procedures (SQL server). But how should I start doing this as I dont want to install SQL server on my clients system.
thanks in advance..
I think it depends on the goal of your application, the amout and sturcture of the data and the environment. The last point aims to the client system, if the client is part of an enterprise network (e.g. Active Directory) or is a common user at home.
maybe you can use xml or json files to store the data
if you need a database, you can create a setup project for your application which automatically installs a SQL Server express
another way is, if it's applicable for you, your application can consume a webservice which provide the data
you could use SQL Server compact http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645984(v=sql.100).aspx or SQL Lite to embark your DB in your application without external dependencies.
Otherwise, if offline isn't a requirement, you could go the "cloud" way, with web APIs
Age old question! When you have finished developing and testing your ASP.Net web application, the database you want to deploy is now full of test information and needs to be emptied (and identity fields reseeded to 1) before you deploy.
When using a server instance, this isnt difficult (create a SQL script to do the job) but when using a user instance, its seems there is no easy way around?
Can anyone help with this? Thanks
See if this could help you http://rip747.wordpress.com/2007/10/01/sql-server-2005-import-export-reset-identity-keys-no-workaround-2005-sucks-period-the-end/
Here is another good one
http://dotnetslackers.com/community/blogs/mosessaur/archive/2007/12/09/sql-server-2005-clean-your-database-records-amp-reset-identity-columns-all-in-6-lines.aspx
You can connect SSMS to a user instance DB, it just requires a bit of voodoo to discover the DB name.
As for scripting the sql, you can also use the Sql Server hosting toolkit to do this.
My Problem is the following,
I have an ASP.Net web site hosted on IIS. This web site connects to an Access 2007 DB file on the same server. The DB file contains links to sharepoint lists on another server on the same domain. If I run the web site on the visual studio built-in server, I can Open connection to the DB file and retrieve data just fine. But whenever I try to run the web site over the IIS, the web site can't open a connection with the DB file.
What do you think the problem is?
Thanks.
It will be a permissions problem. When you run with Visual Studio's web server it is running as you, IIS on the other hand runs (by default) as Network Service. This is limited in what it can do.
To access an access database (no pun intended) the account that IIS runs under will need the ability to read, write, execute, change and delete for the directory the database is in. By default this should be granted to the APP_DATA directory, if your access database is elsewhere you will need to grant these permissions.
Connecting via Access to a remote machine is a whole other problem, it's unlikely this will work because the Network Service account is a local account and will not exist on the sharepoint server, and you cannot grant access because it does not exist.
If you were in a domain you could run IIS under a suitable locked down domain account and it might work, but frankly it's all a bit messy!
Have a look at this article:
How to connect to a remote Access database from Active Server Pages
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/253580
Yes, I know your database is on the same machine, but there are differences in permissions and authentication for files and folders when you run IIS. The chances are good that whatever is hanging you up is covered in this article.
Whether mixing Access databases and IIS is a Good Thing or not is a separate discussion...
Access 2007 makes connecting to SharePoint a breeze. After you link to a list, then ADO, and even DAO + VBA code and your sql queries work on those lists!
I seen a good number of people thus start using the JET (actually it called ACE in access 2007) as a data connector to SharePoint for this very reason. Since your are building a web based system then we not using ms-access here, but ONLY using the 2007 version of the JET data engine that ships with access 2007.
Someone does need to come out with a OLEDB provider for SharePoint lists that allows ones web site or .net code to view those lists as standard sql tables like ms-access can. Using JET as the data connector system is likely not such a good idea. I do realize that you not storing nor placing data in the access JET table, but are using the wonderful ability of the new access JET engine to view and use SharePoint lists as regular sql tables. This approach does allow your ASP.net code to execute sql updates on that data or do whatever as if this was a regular sql table. It does make this oh so easy.
The security permissions on the SharePoint site are thus going to view this connection as not as a end user, but always see the USER as the actual web site connecting (or at least the user you were in ms-access when you linked the table to SharePoint). I don’t believe the SharePoint user authentication process can work reliable when you do this. What will happen is you change a few things on the SharePoint site, and next thing you know the JET connection will be trying to prompt you for new logon credentials. You can’t provide nor control those logon credentials at that point in time.
So, as others pointed out, this is going to be problematic and not reliable.
Using Access as a fudge to access SharePoint from an ASP.net site is going to give you lots of pain in the long run.
A much better way would be to use SharePoint's web services to access that data - removing Access from the equation altogether.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/8634090/Accessing-SharePoint-Data-Using-C-Without-Running-Code-On-the-SharePoint-Server-Part-1
MSDN - Using ASP.NET web services
Creating and Consuming a Web Service
I've been doing PHP/MySQL websites with shared hosting providers for the last couple years. The day-to-day process is basically:
develop in Eclipse, one website per folder
upload via FileZilla, one website per folder
use PHPMyAdmin to create and manage your local and online databases and transfer data from one to another
to backup the online database I do dump of the database tables into script and copy them locally
I now want to build websites with ASP.NET with SQL Server 2008 on shared hosting providers, and am trying to get into this new paradigm, hopefully some of you can give me some pointers based on your experience and tell me what I am not doing optimally:
I've installed both the Visual Web Developer 2008 Express as well as the full version of Visual Studio 2008, both seem to be full-featured tools for developing ASP.NET sites. In terms of websites at shared hosting providers, what can you do with the full version that you can't do with the express version?
I use FileZilla to upload my sites, which seems to work fine. Do you use an external FTP program to upload your sites or do you use the "Publish" or "FTP Website" in the above IDEs?
I installed SQL Server 2008 Management Studio and can now issue SQL commands to my online SQL Server database (although I strangely can't see my database in the list on the left, I can still access it, I assume this is some rights issue with my provider, www.domainbox.de, but this provider told me to use their online manager instead, which is called "ASP.NET Enterprise Manager" which is extremely simple but at least has a "Query Box" which allows me to send queries to my database.) Is this "ASP.NET Enterprise Manager" standard with ASP.NET hosters or is there something else that is better, e.g. where you could edit your data in the grid, etc.? And I assume that with most providers you are able to manage your online SQL Server database with SQL Server Management Studio, is that correct? (I remember back in 2001 managing online SQL Server 2000 database at a shared hosting provider with Enterprise Manager and it would take literally 10 minutes for me to see my database on the left because it listed out the other 800 customer databases as well -- hopefully this has been solved by now).
How do you backup your data in your online database to local storage? (currently I would have to write code that output my data to some other format, e.g. XML or SQL Script)
And after you make a number of structural and data changes to your local database, how do you transfer those changes and the new data to your online database? (I had to install SSMS Tools [http://www.ssmstoolspack.com] to be able to dump my data into a script so that I could get it back into my online database).
So, although I've gotten most things to work, I feel like there must be better ways to go about this, better providers, better tools, etc. Would like to hear some "best practices" advice from anyone who works with ASP.NET, SQL Server and shared hosting.
For the most part, what you're doing now will work with an asp.net website.
For your development environment, I don't think you will be limited by using Visual Web Developer 2008 express for what you want to do. Here is a microsoft page that compares every version of visual studio 2008, including Visual Web Developer 2008 Express: Visual Studio 2008 Product Comparison
For deploying your website over the net, I would generall stick to deploying manually. You can use some of the automated stuff in visual studio, but your deployment will tend to be a little slower. After compiling your application, it will then delete every file in your destination website, and upload everying from scratch (uncompressed I think). Your whole site will be down while this happens. When you deploy manually you can upload just the changed files, or everything in a compressed format.
Regarding the SQL server, many shared hosting services will let you connect with some sort of local SQL management tool. However, connecting this way generally uses a lot of bandwidth so they throttle the allowed bandwidth for this way down. This is probably the performance issues you previously saw. If you can get by with it, I would use their hosted SQL tools for most of your work, but then use the management studio for anything it can't handle.
For backing up your SQL server, if your host doesn't have a way for you to perform an automatic backup then you will have to do something yourself. I would first check to see if they will allow you to at least run a SQL backup command. This will generate a .bak file of your database, but on the local database server. Most places will work with you on this, since many customers need this.
For applying changes to your database, your best bet is to script all of the changes into one sql script and run it using the remote SQL management tool. These aren't hard to write, and there are a few tools out there that will help you with it. I personally like to use Visio. It lets me compare two databases (local and remote) then generate a script to apply to the remote one with all the changes.
Good luck
As far as capabilities of VS Express vs Standard - Standard is still the better tool. It gives you a richer debugging experience, broader support for solutions/projects dependencies among other things.
These things still matter even when doing shared hosting b/c you absolutely need to debug your app (client and server side). You can do this adequately with Express with some caveats (cant attach to an arbitrary process, client side javascript debugging is a pain), Standard makes this MUCH easier.
For publishing/deploying - I would recommend 'Web Depoyment Projects' - an MSBuild extension that you can download from MS. This gives you a lot of customizability of how you want to build and deploy your website - which can include sending it to an FTP site. If you have ever used MSBuild and like it - Web Deployment Projects are the easiest hook to extend your build process with an ASP.NET website.