Comments on: Web site vs web application in Visual Studio

By: Gary

Gary — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:43:40 +0000

“Codebehind” refers to the code associated with an aspx page. I guess you could broaden that to all the code in all classes, but I really think it was meant to be more limited. The additional classes are still called “components”.

As for Bruce’s comment that the web app method is dependent on good working practices, most of those bugs can be caught in local testing. Once in a while, someone forgets to upload a DLL, and then yes, that only happens with web apps and not web sites.

By: Multiple outputs from T4 made easy – revisited » DamienG

Multiple outputs from T4 made easy – revisited » DamienG — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:18:33 +0000

[...] Studio has both web sites and web applications with the former being project-less leading to very messy multi-file generation so it forces single [...]

By: Bruce

Bruce — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 12:46:24 +0000

Here’s a few additional thoughts on both deployment methods:

Website Method – Con: Very prone to failure due to outside influences. For example, Indexing Server locking the temp dll files which then causes sync issues.

Web Application Method – Con: Totally dependant on good working practices. It only takes one junior developer failing to use Sourcesafe correctly to take down the whole site rather than just a single page. This is obviously more relevant to smaller development teams. I work in a small team and I’ve seen it happen more than once :)

By: Damien Guard

Damien Guard — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:36:59 +0000

@Lucas: I intended on writing something about VS2003 only to find I couldn’t remember much about it apart from hacking Class Library projects to behave as a web site you could store locally.

Thanks for the kind words!

[)amien

By: Lucas

Lucas — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:20:46 +0000

Oh, and another thing… I enjoy you blog very much. Keep it up ;)

By: Lucas

Lucas — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:19:13 +0000

Hi Damien,

Just wanted to clarify, you make it seem like “web applications” projects were developed after “web sites”. As I remember it, web application was the only way in VS2003, and was replaced by web sites in VS2005. I think enough people missed web apps so much that it was released as an add-on to VS2005, included in VS2005 SP1, and later in VS2008.

By: Dave^2

Dave^2 — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 20:10:59 +0000

I realise you said “classes are *typically* stored on the web server”, but just thought I’d clarify that you don’t have to deploy the source with Web Site. There are a number of publishing/precompilation options for Web Sites to avoid having to do this.
Regards,
David

By: steve

steve — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:22:32 +0000

We had a ‘semi-continous’ integration server setup, in that the codebase was continuously rebuilt and unit tests run against it, but deployment was a separate step. Most CI servers don’t operate within the same environment as the ‘real’ sized production / system test environs so can’t 100% recreate it, unless it’s very simple or your CI setup has a chunky budget (unlikely if you already have to fund full-size acceptance test environments, unless you’re loaded). Stuff like integration with external systems, full-scale tests and even some aspects of web testing can’t be done entirely properly by a CI setup, which is usually running on a modest dev box. We also had a strict sign-off system where it shouldn’t be possible for a dev to deploy anything to a production server, only ops had that access and they required sign-off from acceptance testers (business stakeholders) first. We had scripts that did the deployment from any release to any server so it was repeatable no matter who was doing it, but we didn’t find a decent way of integrating that into a CI setup.

By: Damien Guard

Damien Guard — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 15:34:48 +0000

@Steve: Yes, there wasn’t a need for a new term. Just saying the code was in a class should have been enough to understand it wasn’t inline script.

@Baggio: Sorted! I’ll get there eventually ;-)

@Ken: That seems like a nice balance. Do you automate the deployment steps with scripts?

Personally I’d love my web sites and apps to be deployed from a CI server on demand but we’re still some way from continuous integration here.

[)amien

By: Ken Egozi

Ken Egozi — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 14:31:18 +0000

My favorite schema – I use MonoRail and AspView. So to the server I only deploy:
1. web.config.
2. global.asax
3. Web.dll (controllers) dependencies (domain dll, castle, NHibernate, whadever)
4. CompiledViews.dll (all of the view templates in precompiled format)
5. js css image files
6. Error.htm (just in case)

so, usually a fix process to a template is:
a. run vcompile (created CompiledViews.dll out of the view templates)
b. copy compiledViews.dll to deployment machine.