Installer App Asp.net 4.0 Cassini SQL Express

Question

Hi,

We have built an ASP.NET application in 4.0 (we can change it to 3.5 if necessary) with a SQL Server database.

I am looking to create an installation package (exe or msi) so that I can provide this file to my clients and they can install it on all of their laptops. This asp.net application will be running on laptops that don't have access to the internet.

Some of these laptops have XP Home, Win 7 Home, and other windows operating systems and not all of them have IIS installed. Is there some sort of simple application that I can use to create an Installer application where it will install IIS or some other web server, SQL Express, and .NET framework 4.0. If these applications are installed already, then it shouldn't install it. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You could accomplish this using a Setup Project in Visual Studio.

I know about Web Deployment Packages. See if that helps in some way.

Check this extensive list of useful links:

Overview Post for Web Deployment in VS 2010

Answer 2

My company (Comet Way) makes a product that is designed for this: http://www.neokernel.com. Our customers use it when they need to access web databases offline on laptops. It's an assembly that you can distribute with your product without requiring a separate install, it works on any machine with .NET (or Mono), and it implements a full featured secure web server that runs any website that IIS will run.

Hope this helps, Damien

Answer 3

Our company develops a product for industrial automation that includes Cassini as part of the setup. The following article tells more about our experience with re-distributing and configuring Cassini, you may find it useful: http://www.controlsystemworks.com/articles/UsingCassiniWebServer.html