Articles → LIGHT SWITCH 2011 → Deploy Lightswitch Web Application Connected To External Database

Deploy Lightswitch Web Application Connected To External Database

The objective of this tutorial is to demonstrate how to deploy lightswitch web application connected to external database.

Prerequisites

Software

Visual studio 2010 is installed on your machine.
Visual Studio 2010 service pack 1 is installed on your machine.
Microsoft Visual Studio Light switch 2011 is installed on your machine.

Technical knowledge

In order to understand this tutorial you must know

How to create a project in visual studio?
Basics of lightswitch like screens entities
How to add external data source in lightswitch?
Basics about IIS
What is the authorization and authentication?

Steps Involved

In order to achieve our goal we will follow these steps

Create a table with data in database
Add existing data source and editable grid screen
Publish your application
Configure the environment
Run the application

Create A Table With Data In Database

Create a table in the database as shown below

Picture showing the schema of the sample table

Click to Enlarge

Picture showing the records in the sample table

Click to Enlarge

Add Existing Data Source And Editable Grid Screen

I assume that by now you would know how to add existing data source and editable grid screen to the project. Verify whether you have done it correctly by checking your solution explorer against the picture given below

Picture showing the external data source added in the lightswitch project

Click to Enlarge

Now build the project to ensure that there is no error.

Publish Your Application

First of all open visual studio in admin mode and open the project.
Change the configuration from debug to release.
Now, right click on project and click on publish as shown below

Picture showing the publish option in the context menu for publishing the application

Click to Enlarge

The following window will appear to select application type. It will provide two options – whether you want to run it on the user’s desktop or on the user’s browser. We have selected ‘web’ option because we want to run it on user’s browser.

Picture showing the first screen of the publish wizard to specify the application type

Click to Enlarge

Click on next

The wizard will now present another window to you where it provides you three options to host your application. Select option no.2 – ‘IIS server’ as you can see that it is mentioned that IIS Server has the ‘lightswitch deployment prerequisites installed’. This is exactly what we require.

Picture showing the second screen of the publish wizard for selecting the hosting environment

Click to Enlarge

Click next

You would now be presented by ‘Specify Publishing Preferences’ window: If you want to create a package on disk then select option one but if we want to deploy our package directly on IIS, we will select option two ‘Remotely Publish To a Server now’.

Picture showing the third screen of the publish wizard for selecting the deployment type

Click to Enlarge

The ‘service URL’ contains the protocol we will use(http in this case) and the host (localhost).

In the ‘Site/Application field’, specify the details of the site and the application. You can provide any application name. In this case we have named it ‘Sample_Deploy_App’.

Click Next.

The next step is to configure the user connection strings.

Picture showing the fourth screen of the publish wizard for specifying the database connection string

Click to Enlarge

Click Next.

You will now be taken to a ‘Specify a Certificate’ screen. Since we are working on a test application, we can skip this part .

Picture showing the fifth screen of the publish wizard for specifying the certificate

Click to Enlarge

Click Next

You will now be provided will all the details that you have provided to the publishing wizard. If all is okay you can click on ‘Publish’.

Picture showing the final screen of the publish wizard

Click to Enlarge

After successfully publishing your application, open IIS. Your application will be displayed as shown in figure below.

Picture showing the application deployed on IIS server

Click to Enlarge

Configuring The Environment

Now click on the application in IIS to select (if not already selected) and click on ‘Basic Settings…’ on the right hand side. A window appears as shown below

Click to Enlarge

Click on ‘Test Settings…’ to check if there are any issues with the settings.

Picture showing the window to check if the user is authenticated or not

Click to Enlarge

A yellow warning sign indicates issues with authorization. In order to fix this you need to close this window and click on ‘Connect as…’

A window appears as shown below

Picture showing a window for adding user credentials for authentication

Click to Enlarge

Select ‘Specific User:’ and click on ‘Set…’ button. A window will appear to help you set credentials.

Picture showing the window to enter user credentials

Click to Enlarge

Enter valid user name like domain_name/user_name . Once you have provided the entire information click on Ok to close this window. Click Ok again to close ‘Connect As’ window.

Now from ‘Basic settings’ we will check the settings again by clicking on ‘Test Settings…’ button. A green tick sign indicates that all is well and the authorization warning has been tackled properly.

Picture showing the test connection window for authentication and authorization

Click to Enlarge

Click close and close ‘Basic settings..’ window as well.

Now select application and click on ‘Authentication’ icon and make sure you enable ’Anonymous Authentication’ and ‘ASP.NET Impersonation’.

Picture showing enabling the Anonymous Authentication and ASP.NET authorization

Click to Enlarge

Run The Application

Now you can run the application using http://localhost/Sample_Deploy_App/Default.htm

Picture showing the deployed lightswitch application on IIS

Click to Enlarge

Posted By -	Karan Gupta

Posted On -	Saturday, May 10, 2014

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