Hi,

I have to answer this questions to people in my company, and can't find a real explanation.
Actually, whenthey deployall the applications we sell to a customer in his company, they used to put the application (.exe + related DLL) somewhere in the newtork (like on the hard disk of a server) and just create a shortcut on the desktop of each workstation!!
It's easy in term of depoyment. When we have to udpate the applicatons, we just have to udpate once, on the hardisk of the server.
We don't need to use MSI, or clickonce or installshield on each workstation.

The applications are written in Delphi or Java, we are rewriting each of them in .NET.
Do I have to recommend to deploy the application locally?
Why? What are the benefits??
The main one would be the disconnected mode, but we do not need it.

I'm surprised, because I never read such recommendation on the web. Do you think it is a standard????

Thanks for your help

Rod

If it works for you, then run it that way. If/when you develop a problem, take another look at ClickOnce. You're incorrect about having access to the periphals. You didn't even try it, so you're not really sure what it can and can't do.

By the way, I'm assuming you don't have any user-specific data that the application has to access.

RobinDotNet

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Click here to visit my ClickOnce blog!

It sounds like ClickOnce fits what you do. That installs files locally, but it has an update mechanism that detects when new versions are available on the deployment server and downloads them.

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Phil Wilson

Hi Phil,

thanks for your answer.
Actually, it is not really usable inour situation.
There are so many limitations/constraints that we cannot use it.
As far as I know the applicationhas no access to the peripherals (printers, COM port and so on) when deployed by ClickOnce (because of the sandbox).
This is maybe the main problem. An dI'm not speaking about the fact that the application is installed per user(!!). As several users will use the application, it means that the application will be installed maybe 10 times per workstation.

So I'm still wondering why we could not leave the application of a network and launch it from there.

Best regards
Rod

If it works for you, then run it that way. If/when you develop a problem, take another look at ClickOnce. You're incorrect about having access to the periphals. You didn't even try it, so you're not really sure what it can and can't do.

By the way, I'm assuming you don't have any user-specific data that the application has to access.

RobinDotNet

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Click here to visit my ClickOnce blog!

Hi,

yes you're right, I did a confusion with Silverlight.
The things that are not possible are:

Install Services

Install to GAC

Manage ODBC

Manage COM+

Write to Registry

Advertising

Self-Repair

File/Folder/Registry Permissions

Install-time User Interaction

Install for All Users

Custom Actions at Install/Uninstall

Installation Conditions/System Interrogation

I know that I could let the things like they are (installed only once on the network) and wait, but I am looking for something like a study about why shall we use tools like ClickOnce when we could simply let the application on a single PC.
Maybe other people had experience about the last solution with PROS and CONS.
Again, I'm still wondering if it is something common or if we are the only company in the world with this kind of deployment :-)
I'm just looking for argument

thx
Rod

I would guess it would depend a lot on your network. When you are running an exe on a network shared drive, you are always going across the network to run it. Also, .Net apps load the assemblies as you need them, so the traffic across the network continues constantly while the user is running the application.

If your network is slow, or gets impacted by some other usage, your clients' performance would be impacted.

Also, if you had a LOT of users, this wouldn't be desirable, as it would impact network traffic.

It's always going to be faster for the user to have the assemblies on his own machine. You can use ClickOnce to deploy to a web server or network share, and the user will pick up updates from there, but run the app on his own machine.

Plus, if the user has configuration information, it resides on his own machine, and you don't have to put forth special effort to separate the configuration information for all of the different users.

RobinDotNet

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Click here to visit my ClickOnce blog!

Hi Rod -

That's the way we always did it in our organization. I am wondering how many users you deployed to?

We too have the problem of many users on the same machine because the users switch workstations quite often. They would have to install each application every time they moved if I deploy using ClickOnce.