When is ASP.Net 4 available on a server - asp.net

i was building a new small website for an existing client, and thought about building it with ASP.Net 4.
But in the apppoolsettings, i could only choose framework 2.0, so i guessed that 4.0 is not available on the server.
Is it something i have to install on the server, or will it be installed via windows update somewhere in time?
it's a win2008 standard server.

You can certainly download and install it yourself, e.g. from here. You want the full .NET 4, not the .NET 4 client profile - that doesn't include ASP.NET.
According to this blog it will eventually become an optional update on Windows servers (if it isn't already).

you just need to install .net framework 4.0 on server.

Related

Why can't ASP.NET be hosted on a linux server?

ASP.NET is open source so shouldn't it be able to be hosted on any server just like a web app written in any other open source language such as php not limited to a windows server?
ASP.NET Core, the latest version (still in preview) in fact can be run on Linux.
Previous versions of ASP.NET have a dependency on the .NET Framework which only runs on Windows.
Technically, you can via ASP.NET Mono, and in fact Mono has support up to ASP.NET 4.0 and MVC 3.
The limiting factor really is IIS doesn't run on *nix, so you'll not be able to use the configuration aspects of the projects, but you can run the code via Apache modules or FastCGI.
The ASP.NET framework isn't open source (it has too many dependencies on internal code) but ASP.NET MVC and the new .NET Core, and ASP.NET Core releases are.
But just because something's open source, doesn't mean it "runs everywhere" it just means that you have some rights to look at the code, and typically can do things with that - someone still has to write an engine that can interpret and run your code on another operating system.

System requirements for using ASP.NET

I consider to use ASP.NET for developing a real-time appication that will be shown on a browser (IE, FF, Chrome etc.).
I'm wondering what are the system requirements for the server side where the application will be deployed?
Do I have to use IIS or I'm free to choose any web server I want? If IIS only - does it part of any Windows installation (so users do not have to pay extra charge for that?)
Do I have to install .NET Framework?
anything else?
Thank you!
You don't have to use IIS, you could use Apache, nginx, or xsp, but doing so means you have to use mono which is an open source version of the .NET framework, it's a couple of versions behind the real thing, you can find out more info here: http://www.mono-project.com/ASP.NET
If you choose to use Windows/IIS, then IIS is a feature of Windows that can be installed free of charge. You will need to install the .NET framework in order to host an ASP.NET web application, like IIS, the .NET framework and ASP.NET are features of Windows Server 2008 and above that can be installed/uninstalled whenever you like, for free.

.Net 1.1 upgrade to .Net 2 - Does it still use the .Net 1.1 framework

We have recently taken on support of a web application that was written many years ago and targeted v1.1 of the .net framework. It runs on Windows Server 2003/IIS 6 environment.
After looking at the configuration of the site in IIS the target framework is set to 2.0.
Given that extended support for .net 1.1 will cease in October of this year (http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=1249) I am trying to ascertain whether the site will still use any of the .net 1.1 framework assemblies given that the application is built and compiled in Visual Studio 2003.
I am assuming this is the case because although ASP.net 2 is set as the target framework
in IIS (and therefore the aspet_isapi.dll invoked is the .net 2 one etc) the assembly is a .net 1.1 assembly and will therefore still use the 1.1 framework. However, is this assumption actually true?
The website only has another year or so to live before being replaced by a new solution entirely so I would prefer not to upgrade it if possible and run the risks such changes bring with them.
However, we obviously can't run something on an unsupported version of the framework if any element of if that framework is actually being used.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Update:
It would seem that .net 1.1 is a core component of WS2k3 so you can't just uninstall it. I could have attempted to remove the ASP.net component but I don't think that would fully uninstall everything and given that the dev environment is shared I can't risk causing any issues right now.
However I have previously set everything up on my local machine (Windows 7/IIS 7), so I changed the application pool to point at .net 2 (it was already running in classic pipeline mode), uninstalled .net frameworks 1 and 1.1 and cleaned up the files left behind afterwards.
The result was that the site ran absolutely fine, which would suggest in an IIS 7 environment at least that I don't need to worry about upgrading given we are running under .net 2 within IIS.
It's not an ideal test as it isn't a mimick of our live environment. I'm going to post a question on MSDN and asp.net to see if any Microsoft folks can add anything more definitive. I will post back here with any updates.
Just because official support will end doesn't mean Microsoft will pull the plug and force an uninstall of .NET 1.1 via Windows Update. It only means that:
if a gaping hole in the framework's security is ever found, they'll not fix it;
There won't be redistributables for the next versions of Windows, and the next version of IIS won't run it.
So the application will still run in a year. If you leave the server alone, the application might run until the machine breaks of old age.
So my suggestion is relax, and focus more on the new solution.
I got the answer to this questions after reading this link (provided as an answer to this question on the ASP.net forums)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms994381.aspx
Under "Application Load Mechanisms and Possible Issues" it states:
By default, an application built using the .NET Framework will run using the version of the Framework it was built against if that version is installed on the computer
It then goes on to detail (for .net 1.1 and 2.0 at least) when a particular version of the framework is used.
Essentially, because our server has both 1.1 and 2.0 installed the application will still be using version 1.1. If 1.1 was not installed then it would run by default under 2.0, which explains why the web application still worked after I uninstalled .net 1.0 and 1.1 from my local machine.
Given that the live server is W2K3 and I can't remove .net 1.1, I will be rebuilding my application to target .net 4.0.

How do I get the Setup Wizard to stop downloading .net 4 Client Profile?

I have a web application which is entirely .net 3.5. I have created a Setup project using the wizard making sure that I selected 3.5 from the targeted famework.
When I have built the setup.exe and the Windows Installer Package and I have tried to install it on a test machine it prompts straight away to download and install the .net framework 4 client profile first.
The end-user doesn't want to upgrade their servers at this time to the latest version of .net.
Any suggestions?
Double click the .msi file, seems to be installing properly. I would also like to know how to avoid this.

Do a Windows application ifself contain the .NET framework?

I have a Windows application which contain a deployer.
Does the deployer itself contain a copy of the .NET framework?
Or do we have to explicitily install it?
When I check in the solution explorer, it shows the .NET framework under the deployer project under detected dependencies?
My Windows application connects to the Internet to validate for a registered user. Do I need to configure some port (or something like that) while I am installing it? Also how do I check which port my application uses to connect to the Internet?
Regarding #1, just as Xstahef said, you need to prerequisite the .NET framework.
You could put the .NET redistributable in your installer, and if you detect that the .NET runtime is not installed then prompt the user to run and install the .NET distributable contained in your installer (that's what we did some time ago, InstallShield provided this functionality for us). But this may not be recommendable: the .NET runtime has grown a lot in size (depending of the version you need to have in your client's machine), and many customers (at least the educated customers) won't trust installing the runtime from your installer. Besides, you may need to check with the legal department in your company before including a third-party component in your installation.
It depends on your deploy project (Visual Studio, InstallShield?). But commonly, you need to force the .NET installation (prerequisite option). By default, .NET is not contained in the deployment projects.
Here, it depends on the way you want to connect the Internet.
.NET runs in a VM, so you would need to require the framework be installed in order to actually run it. Much like you need to have Flash or Java for those respective mediums. Microsoft has redistributable packages for the .NET framework. So you could probably incorporate them into your installer. If you're targeting 1.1 or 2.0 most people probably won't need it.
So long as you are not trying to get in to the client machine then you shouldn't need anything special like UPnP to [attempt to] open a port if they are behind a NAT router.
Xenocode does allow to running such an application on an absolutely clean PC.

Resources