7. How can you determine whether you should deploy the application or publish the application?
If you want to host the application on a shared hosting environment, you should use publishing; whereas, if you want to create a Web application that is downloaded from a Web site, you should deploy the application to create a setup.exe file.
8. How can you deploy an ASP.NET Web application?
You can deploy an ASP.NET Web application using either the Windows Installer deployment or ClickOnce deployment technique.
9. What is Application Cache?
When a ClickOnce application is installed locally or hosted online, it is stored in the ClickOnce application cache of the client computer. The ClickOnce application cache is a set of hidden directories placed under the Local Settings directory of the current user’s Documents and Settings folder. The application cache contains all the application files, assemblies, configuration files, application and user settings, and data directory. In case the ClickOnce applications are hosted online, the size of the ClickOnce application cache gets limited to a specified amount; whereas, the installed applications do not restrict to the cache size limitation. The cache storage quota is responsible to determine the size of the application cache.
10. What are the enhancements in ClickOnce deployment in .NET 4.0?
In .NET 4.0, the ClickOnce deployment technology is enhanced with the following features:
Support for .NET Framework 4.0 version – Creates applications by using Visual Studio 2010 that can target .NET Framework 4.0 and its new features.
Support for multiple versions of the .NET Framework – Creates applications that are compatible with multiple versions of the .NET Framework. You can specify the target framework for an application as .NET Framework 3.5 or .NET Framework 4 while creating the application.
Enhanced logging feature – Stores logging information that includes various parameters passed to the ClickOnce runtime, the browser settings, and ClickOnce security options.
Custom Installer and User Interface – Allows you to create a custom graphical user interface for installing and updating the .exe applications. In addition, the custom installer can have custom dialog boxes for security and maintenance operations.
11. What is the difference between deploying and publishing an application?
In deployment, you can create a new setup and deployment project. In this project, you can add the project output and create a setup.exe file. After creating an executable file, you need to login into the server and execute the setup.exe file to install the application. On the other hand, in publishing, you need to right-click the application in the Solution Explorer and select Publish to publish the application. Then, you specify a location where the application is to be published. The users can then install the application from the location where you have published it and run locally even when the computer is offline.
12. What do you mean by Merge Module projects?
Merge Module projects are used to package the files and components that are shared between multiple applications. The Merge Module project file contains the .msm extension. The .msm file includes files, resources, registry entries, and setup logic. This file is merged with a Windows installer (.msi) file to correctly install the shared files. If a single merge module is used by more than one application, then you need to add that merge module in the package only once.