Recently I have got an opportunity to work on creating installers for some of our products. In past I never got involved in post development activities but during my current job I spent some time in development related to deployment.
I have discovered there is a whole world out there to explore. Even the tip of the ice berg is quite vast.
Initially I created installers based on MSI technology using Visual Studio. However, I experienced that the approach was not friendly when it come to incorporate some product changes in installer. This is because we need to recompile the entire project and subsequently do some changes to resultant installer via orca. Addition/updation is a very common requirement in the web-based products we sell. For example, sometimes there is a small change like css update of an image/icon changes. This approach, which I was using required someone to rebuild the Visual Studio project which implies that visual studio is present on the machine. In addition, another dependency exists in the form of a person who knows visual studio and has some experience of creating installers.
Eventually a need of such an approach was felt which could free us from such dependencies.
The research resulted in the discovery of Microsoft WIX (Windows Installer Xml). WIX which is based on MSI technology allows us to descriptively create installers using XML files. There are tools through which people only specify the folders that need to be part of the installer and facilities are available to almost do whatever that is necessary while creating installer. Plug-ins are also available to integrate WIX with visual studio.
However, it must be kept in mind that the learning curve is quite steep. To facilitate people who are interested in learning WIX, I am listing some of the resources that I found useful. I will be adding some more resources to the list after filtering the collection I have
Creating WIX Installer for ASP.NET Web Application
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/install/asp_wix.aspx
From MSI to WiX
http://blogs.technet.com/b/alexshev/archive/2008/02/10/from-msi-to-wix.aspx
WIX Tutorial
http://wix.tramontana.co.hu/tutorial
Friday, August 12, 2011
Logging in IIS 7
Location of Log file:
%SystemDrive%\inetpub\logs\LogFiles
Pre-Requisite of Logging:
On Windows Server 2008 R2, following role service must be installed (In other Windows OS the following module must be enabled)
• Http Logging
Enabling and Disabling Logging:
If the pre requisite is installed the “Logging Icon” will appear in the “IIS” category of IIS Manager ([Server] Home Screen)
By default it is enabled, however it can be disabled or other configuration can be changed
References:
http://www.itsolutionskb.com/2009/10/how-to-find-iis-log-files/
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754631(WS.10).aspx
%SystemDrive%\inetpub\logs\LogFiles
Pre-Requisite of Logging:
On Windows Server 2008 R2, following role service must be installed (In other Windows OS the following module must be enabled)
• Http Logging
Enabling and Disabling Logging:
If the pre requisite is installed the “Logging Icon” will appear in the “IIS” category of IIS Manager ([Server] Home Screen)
By default it is enabled, however it can be disabled or other configuration can be changed
References:
http://www.itsolutionskb.com/2009/10/how-to-find-iis-log-files/
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754631(WS.10).aspx
Monday, August 1, 2011
AnjLab Profiler and “master.mdf…trc” files
SQL Profiler is a very useful tool to trace the execution of instructions over a database, however , it is not available for express edition of SQL Server databases
An alternate for this is a profiler from AnjLab which provides features quite similar to that of SQL Profiler.
Both SQL Profiler and AnjLab Profiler make use of the “Trace” facility available in the database engine of SQL Server.
Overall this profiler is harmless, however, there are two issues that must be considered when using the profiler
1. The profiler creates “master.mdf..yyyy.mm.dd.hh.min.sec.trc” file but (at least in our case it) does not delete the file when tracing is finished. These files are created in the default “DATA” folder of SQL Server instance (in our case). Since the files are not deleted automatically therefore a number of trace executions consume a lot of valuable space
2. In our scenario, if the profiler executes for a long time then it starts going into “Not Responding” states. Eventually the user is forced to close the application. In this case the “Trace” in SQL Server is not deleted thus it continues to execute and keeps on creating files unless explicitly closed using “sp_trace_setstatus”. (For more information on finding, stopping and closing traces see the article in this blog “SQL Server Trace Files Consuming Lot of Space”).
An alternate for this is a profiler from AnjLab which provides features quite similar to that of SQL Profiler.
Both SQL Profiler and AnjLab Profiler make use of the “Trace” facility available in the database engine of SQL Server.
Overall this profiler is harmless, however, there are two issues that must be considered when using the profiler
1. The profiler creates “master.mdf..yyyy.mm.dd.hh.min.sec.trc” file but (at least in our case it) does not delete the file when tracing is finished. These files are created in the default “DATA” folder of SQL Server instance (in our case). Since the files are not deleted automatically therefore a number of trace executions consume a lot of valuable space
2. In our scenario, if the profiler executes for a long time then it starts going into “Not Responding” states. Eventually the user is forced to close the application. In this case the “Trace” in SQL Server is not deleted thus it continues to execute and keeps on creating files unless explicitly closed using “sp_trace_setstatus”. (For more information on finding, stopping and closing traces see the article in this blog “SQL Server Trace Files Consuming Lot of Space”).
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