asp.net-sql server 2005 express database deployment

Question

Hey guys This might sound very trivial to most of you experts but I am still a rookie so I will greatly appreciate any help. And I know its not a C# related question but I just like you guys. I am tying to deploy a asp.net web application on intranet by making a setup msi package for my project. Everything goes fine but only the database is not accessible by the application. I was googling for the last three days and couldn't find anything that could help. My question in a nutshell is: How can I package my database with my project so that it could install and run on clients network without any problem. I don't want the client to enter any connection strings or do any other kind of configurations to IIS because they can't. So I want to give them a product ready to run just by clicking next on the setup wizard. Please help. Thanks in advance.

Khalid · Answer

Hi Raaj Thanks for the help. I really need your help with that custom action thing in setup project. Also I want to mention that I was using sql server express for development and now I want to deploy this on sql sever. I don't know how to work the connections string for this and how to make the setup project that automatically deploys the database on sql server. Hope I make sense. Thanks again for help

Raaj Kumar · Answer

Khalid If you want an entry in web.config for connection string try writing a custom action. Using this custom action you can create even database and do whatever thing you want while installing an application. If you need help on custom actions please let me know such that I could provide you a sample application. Regards Raaj

Khalid · Answer

Hey Kirtan What's up man I just added a setup project to my project then on the editor that opens up I right clicked on the web application folder then selected project output then on the dialog box that pops up with the content files highlighted I clicked ok. After that I built the setup project and that's it. thanx for the reply.

Kirtan Patel · Answer

I would like to ask you how you built ..msi ??