I had a engineer design our .net application back in 2009, my guess is that it was coded using visual studio, and all I have is the installer application. We have been using it on our 1 or 2 local client machines very well for the past few years, but now I want to move this front end to the cloud. Instead of installing it as an application on our windows 7 machines.
It is a very simple application used in our small warehouse that keeps track of cargo/shipments etc. It uses Sql Server 2008 Express as a backend which is stored locally.
I know how to get the database in the cloud, their are many options for that, using Amazon or Azure, but how do i get the local client application to the cloud?
I dont have access to the visual studio code, i just have the runtime executable file..
I am sure there is no way to do this, and many of SO users will say i need to re-write the front end.
I have tried to contact the developer and they hav since closed down. Is their anyway i can run this in the cloud?
I welcome all options and solutions!
Thanks.
I believe you have two options for hosting this application:
If you are able to configure the database connection string, you could host the database in the cloud, and distribute the application to your end users. However, you've already stated that you know how to move the database, so I assume this isn't an option.
The only alternative is to run the entire application on a cloud server, and send the user interface to a client using terminal services. This makes it appear as if the application is running locally on the user's computer, while it is actually running on the server.
For an off-the-shelf solution to achieve this, you could consider using Microsoft's RemoteApp Azure service. I'm sure there are other similar offerings available.
Related
I have created this assignment where I am essentially using .net Core to read and write to an instance of a SQL localDb: Github
This is my first time using a localdb, but when I submitted it to my professor, he is not able to create, or manipulate the database at all. My thoughts were that when he runs it, it would create and instance of the database on his computer, but I guess not. He gets the following error:
SqlException: Cannot open database 'Bartender_App' requested by login. The Login failed. Login failed for user "Username"
this error occurs when trying to create a new order. Is there any way to bypass this authentication? because the web app works on my computer.
would he have to create his own migrations and update the database from Visual Studios on his end?
I have tried to look it up, but come across deployment of these web apps to a server which is not what I am trying to do, I am just aiming for him to be able to run the application on his computer, even if the database starts empty, and he can manipulate, add, and remove the data from the localDb instance
I apologize in advance for the tags - the autocomplete feature was not showing up correctly.
Is there any way to bypass this authentication? because the web app
works on my computer.
This is impossible, SQL Server Express LocalDB does not accept remote connections.
As an alternative, you can automate the backup of your database structure and provide it to your instructor, you can refer to How to copy a database from one computer to another?.
If there is not much table, manual creation may be faster and easier.
More details ,have a look for Can SQL Server Express LocalDB be connected to remotely?.
I have developed an application using VB.NET and used microsoft access as the database back end.
Deployment reqiurements : The application is to be deployed on a LAN with 5_15 machines. Any user profile can be accessed from any machine. Any changes to the database entries should be reflected on all machines.
I am confused about how I should achieve this deployment. According to my research :
1.The database should be deployed on one machine . This machine will acts as the database server .
My problem(s) : I am familiar with accessing databases on local machine but how to access a remote database?. How will the connection string look like? Do I need to install ms access on all machines or only on the server machine ? Do I have to deal with concurrency issues (multiple users accessing/modifying same data simultaneously) or is it handled by the database engine?
2.The application can be deployed in 2 ways : i. Storing the executable on a shared network drive on the server.Providing shortcut on desktop of each machine. ii. Storing the executable itself on each machine.
My Problem(s) : How does approach 1 work ? (One instance of an executable running on multiple machines ? :s) In approach 2 , will the changes in database entries be reflected on all machines appropriately? In approach 2, if there are changes to the application , is there any method to update it on all machines ? ( Other than redeploying it on each machine ) Which approach is preferable? Do I need to install the .NET framework all machines? How will i set the connection string to be able to access the database in the network?
Will I have to make any other system changes ( firewall,security,permissions) ? If given a choice to install the operating system on each machine ,which version of windows is preferable for such an application environment ?
This is my first time deploying a multi-user database application on a network.I'll be very grateful for any suggestions/advice,references,etc.
I will try and answer your questions:
Yes you should deploy the database onto a central machine. (Although Access may not the best choice for this sort of thing see: Is MS Access (JET) suitable for multiuser access?)
For connection strings look at this site: http://www.connectionstrings.com/access/
For deployment of your executable you should look at clickonce. This simplifies the install and upgrade of your application significantly. A small learning curve now will reduce your administration headache later.
I'm building a website that will surface data from a third party system. The third party will provide a copy of all the data I need as a SQL restore file (*.bak) inside a rar file on their sftp server. The data changes every day, so my application will need to connect to the sftp site, get the file, unzip it, then restore it into my database server every night. I'm fairly comfortable scripting this in a standard windows environment, but the customer would prefer the application to be built on the MS Azure cloud, which doesn't seem to support a common solution to the problem. It's possible we could abandon Azure, but I'd like to know what the best strategy would be for implementing in Azure if it's possible.
This depends on whether you are trying to use Azure PaaS (cloud service and SQL Azure) or IaaS (VMs). If you are using VMs on Windows Azure, there is going to be no difference between Windows Azure and your familiar Windows environment - so yes, you can do this on Windows Azure.
This can't really be done in Azure cloud services and SQL Azure (SQL Azure cannot restore a .bak file). But your application doesn't seem to be the kind that would run as a cloud service anyway.
Stick to doing it on VMs and it will work as you are familiar with.
I'm very new to Sync Framework, Still exploring different possibilities. Here is my Scenario.
We need to have an application (SQL Server and ASP.Net) which is hosted on our web server. Users can register and interact with it online. Another Copy of the application will be installed on our Client's Intranet server. Users can be registered over LAN on this server.
A third copy of the Application (SQL Express) will be installed on various laptops and windows 7 tablets. Users will use the application remotely without connectivity to LAN or internet. Once the device is back in network, it will sync data with the LAN server and LAN Server will sync to the Internet server.
I intend to do this using WCF services and Sync Framework for the sake of security, however I'm open for suggestions. Can someone please suggest me the correct way of doing this and point me to some tutorials samples to do this. I've been struggling with samples available online (mainly this one http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Database-SyncSQL-Server-e97d1208) for a while and still have no success ..
Feel free to shoot any questions and I will answer them as best as I can.
have a look at this link and ignore/substitute the Azure specific stuff with SQL Server...it has a good discussion on the WCF specific components... Walkthrough of Windows Azure Sync Service Sample
Is there any way so IIS could connect to LocalDB without using the NT SERVICE\NETWORK SERVICE user account.
This account has not suitable permissions. I'm looking use some other default account or is there some way that I can use the NETWORK SERVICE account without changing permissions?
You should use Shared Instances feature of LocalDB. These two posts on Using LocalDB with Full IIS should give you more information. Especially the second part seems relevant, but the first one contains some context as well.
(note: the original links are no longer available, using archive.org instead)
Part 1: User Profile
Part 2: Instance Ownership
Original (non-working as of March 2019) links:
Part 1: User Profile
Part 2: Instance Ownership
In case the links disappear again, I am copy-pasting solutions from the article for easier access:
Post 1:
The problem we're facing is that the user profile needs to be loaded. That shouldn't be hard since each IIS Application Pool has an option called Load User Profile that can be found in Advanced Settings section. Unfortunately things got slightly more complicated in Service Pack 1 for Windows 7. As described in KB 2547655 enabling loadUserProfile is not enough to fully load user profile, we also need to enable setProfileEnvironment. This requires editing applicationHost.config file which is usually located in C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config. Following the instructions from KB 2547655 we should enable both flags for Application Pool ASP.NET v4.0, like this:
<add name="ASP.NET v4.0" autoStart="true" managedRuntimeVersion="v4.0" managedPipelineMode="Integrated">
<processModel identityType="ApplicationPoolIdentity" loadUserProfile="true" setProfileEnvironment="true" />
</add>
Having completed that we restart the Application Pool to make sure the new settings are applied and run our Web Application again.
Note from my side: Just find "applicationPools" tag in that applicationHost file and update those two variables to true, so it looks like this:
<processModel identityType="ApplicationPoolIdentity" loadUserProfile="true" setProfileEnvironment="true" />
That's it, save the file and restart IIS pool.
Post 2:
The Problem of the Private Instance
As we can see we are facing the following error:
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Cannot open database "OldFashionedDB" requested by the login. The login failed.
Login failed for user 'IIS APPPOOL\ASP.NET v4.0'.
This time the error is quite clear. LocalDB was started and the Web Application was able to connect to it, but the connection was then terminated due to login failure. The ApplicationPoolIdentity account for the IIS application pool (in this case IIS APPPOOL\ASP.NET v4.0) couldn't login to LocalDB instance because the database specified in the connection string (OldFashionedDB) wasn't found. How odd, since connecting from Visual Studio with the same connection string succeeds!
How is it possible that Visual Studio connects to LocalDB just fine, while the connection from Web Application fails? In both cases the connection string is the following:
Data Source=(localdb)\v11.0;Initial Catalog=OldFashionedDB;Integrated Security=True
The answer is that there are two different LocalDB instances here. Unlike SQL Server Express instances, which are running as Windows services, LocalDB instances are running as user processes. When different Windows users are connecting to LocalDB, they will end up with different LocalDB processes started for each of them. When we connect to (localdb)\v11.0 from Visual Studio, a LocalDB instance is started for us and runs as our Windows account. But when Web Application, running in IIS as ApplicationPoolIdentity, is connecting to LocalDB, another LocalDB instance is started for it and is running as ApplicationPoolIdentity! In effect, even though both Visual Studio and Web Application are using the same LocalDB connection string, they are connecting to different LocalDB instances. Obviously the database created from Visual Studio on our LocalDB instance will not be available in Web Application's LocalDB instance.
A good analogy to this is My Documents folder in Windows. Say we open Visual Studio and create a file in our My Documents folder. Then we login to the same machine as a different user and go to My Documents folder again. We won't find the file there as My Documents of the second user and our My Documents are two different folders. Similarly LocalDB instances (localdb)\v11.0 owned by two different users are two different processes with two different sets of databases.
This is also the reason the Web Application was able to connect to LocalDB from IIS Express. Just like LocalDB, IIS Express is a user process. It is started by Visual Studio and runs as the same Windows account as the Visual Studio process. Two different processes running as the same Windows account (Visual Studio and IIS Express, both running as our Windows account) connecting to (localdb)\v11.0 are connecting to the same LocalDB process, also started as the same Windows account.
Possible Solutions
Understanding the nature of the problem brings multiple approaches to solving it. As different approaches have different tradeoffs, instead of prescribing one solution, below I presented three approaches that seem most viable to me. My hope is to hear from you about the one that worked best for you! Here is the list:
Approach 1: Run IIS as our Windows user
Approach 2: Use LocalDB Shared Instance
Approach 3: Use full SQL Server Express
Let's take a closer look at each of them.
Approach 1: Run IIS as our Windows user
If different user accounts are the problem, why not try to run our Web Application under our Windows account? Web Application would connect to the same LocalDB as Visual Studio and everything should just work.
Making the configuration change is relatively easy, just start IIS Manager and find the right Application Pool:
Open Advanced Settings screen (available in the context menu):
Click the little button in the Identity property to bring up the Application Pool Identity screen:
Starting the Web Application again will confirm that the problem is solved:
What are the drawbacks of this approach? Of course running Web Application under our account brings certain security risks. If someone hijacks our Web Application they will be able to access all system resources our account can. Running the Web Application as ApplicationPoolIdentity provides additional protection since ApplicationPoolIdentity accounts have very limited access to local system resources. Therefore I cannot recommend this approach in general, but when used with care it is a viable option in some cases.
Approach 2: Use LocalDB Shared Instance
We could also use an instance sharing feature of LocalDB. It allows us to share a LocalDB instance with other users on the same machine. The shared instance will be accessible under a public name.
The easiest way of sharing an instance is to use SqlLocalDB.exe utility. Just start an administrative command line prompt, and type the following command:
sqllocaldb share v11.0 IIS_DB
It will share the private LocalDB instance v11.0 under the public name IIS_DB. All users on the machine will be able to connect to this instance, using (localdb).\IIS_DB as a server address. Note the . before the instance name, indicating this is a shared instance name. We should replace the connection string in our Web Application with an updated one:
Data Source=(localdb)\.\IIS_DB;Initial Catalog=OldFashionedDB;Integrated Security=True
Before the shared instance can be used by the Web Application we need to start it and create logins for the ApplicationPoolIdentity. Starting the instance is easy, simply connecting to it from SQL Server Object Explorer will start it and keep it alive. Once we are in the SQL Server Object Explorer we can also create the login for ApplicationPoolIdentity. We could use the following query:
create login [IIS APPPOOL\ASP.NET v4.0] from windows;
exec sp_addsrvrolemember N'IIS APPPOOL\ASP.NET v4.0', sysadmin
This script gives full administrative access to our LocalDB instance to the ApplicationPoolIdentity account. Whenever possible, I would recommend using more limited, database-level or even table-level permissions.
Now we can run our Web Application again. This time it should work just fine:
What are the drawbacks of this approach? The main one is that, before Web Application can connect to the shared instance, we need to make sure the instance is started. For that to happen the Windows account that owns the instance must connect to it and the connection must be kept open, or the LocalDB instance will shut down.
Approach 3: Use full SQL Server Express
Since full IIS runs as a service, maybe using traditional, service-based SQL Server Express is the right approach? We could just install SQL Server 2012 Express RC0 and create the OldFashionedDB database in it. We can even use our brand new SQL Server Data Tools to do it, as it works with any SQL Server version and edition. Our connection string would have to change to:
Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Initial Catalog=OldFashionedDB;Integrated Security=True
Of course, just as in the previous case, we would need to make sure the ApplicationPoolIdentity account has access to our SQL Server Express instance. We can use the same script as previously:
create login [IIS APPPOOL\ASP.NET v4.0] from windows;
exec sp_addsrvrolemember N'IIS APPPOOL\ASP.NET v4.0', sysadmin
After that, running our Web Application brings the happy picture again:
What are the drawbacks of this approach? Obviously we lose the benefits of using LocalDB. Installing SQL Server Express may take more time than LocalDB, and there may be some machine cleanup necessary for it to succeed. SQL Server Express Setup can be blocked by problems like corrupt WMI database, polluted registry or components left by SQL Server or Visual Studio CTPs and Betas. And SQL Server Express will continue running in the background even when not needed, as services do.
Other options
There are other approaches of using LocalDB under full IIS that are not covered here. We could embrace the Web Application's private LocalDB instance and communicate with it through the Web Application by executing T-SQL scripts from ASP.NET code. We could also use AttachDbFileName option of ADO.NET connection strings and use a database file (.mdf) that would be attached to both our LocalDB during development and Web Application's LocalDB for debugging. I tried both I found them too cumbersome to discuss further.
Based on the answer from #KrzysztofKozielczyk.
I originally posted an answer here:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/62810876/3850405
After following this I verified that Load User Profile was set to true for my Application Pool and then set setProfileEnvironment to true in applicationHost.config. I did the last part by editing applicationHost.config located at:
C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config