Lite asp.net server | Tech Off

Another_Darren
... than you can shake a stick at

One of the teams where I work has developed a Web application on asp.net 2.0 and SQL Server Standard. They don't have a brilliant test environment so we cannot use it for user training.

My idea is that the we have a number of laptop available (very recent high spec) so we could use XP Pro to run IIS and install .NET framework and SQL Express. Each latop would have a default database setup for the start of the training and could be reset by restoring the database back to default.

Not having used IIS on XP or knowing the limitations of SQL Express would this be possible? What issues or restrictions might I have?

Thanks for any and all help!

Gidion2k4

Well basically it depends on what features you are using.

I'm not 100% sure of IIS 5.1 (the one XP has), but if I remember right you are limited to one website or so and only a number of concurrent connections, but for your scenario that shouldn't be a problem. But maybe someone else knows more.

With regard to SQL Server, just check the feature comparison chart and ensure you are not using one of the features that is only available on the "big" one.

As an alternative you could always install eval versions of the big SQL Server (you were saying the laptops are high spec) for testing, or even create the test databases on your main database server (if it's not a production but rather a development server).

HTH

AndyC

Given that the laptops are high spec, I'd run eval versions of Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server in a virtual PC. That way you can enable undo disks and just magically roll the test environment back to it's initial state, should someone break it.

This has the added benefit of giving you as close to a real environment as possible.

Another_Darren
... than you can shake a stick at

The SQL Server we use is just for plain old tables and sprocs so should work under SQL Express. So the IIS on XP Pro supports ASP.NET then I gather?

As for the VirtualPC idea, at first it looked good but the questions about what happens is half way through course te user resets/crashes the virtual server. They would have start from the beginning again keying in all the course data they did earlier in the day.

Has anybody here tried ASP.NET/SQL on XP Pro and had issues?

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Another_Darren wrote:

As for the VirtualPC idea, at first it looked good but the questions about what happens is half way through course te user resets/crashes the virtual server. They would have start from the beginning again keying in all the course data they did earlier in the day.

If you use a differencing disk (not an undo disk) in Virtual PC (create the configuration you like using a normal disk in Virtual PC, then use the Virtual Disk Wizard to create a differencing disk based on that disk you configured) changes will be saved to the differencing file and will persist across reboots. That way, you can just delete the differencing disk file and recreate it if something gets screwed up, but if everything goes as planned, your users can reset/crash Virtual PC all they want and nothing will be lost (well, nothing that wouldn't be lost on a normal computer).