“Dating a girl is just like writing software. Everything’s going to work just fine in the testing lab (dating), but as soon as you have a contract with a customer (marriage), then your program (life) is going to be facing new situations you never expected. You’ll be forced to patch the code (admit you’re wrong) and then the code (wife) will just end up all bloated and unmaintainable in the end.” | ||
| --scott1853 | ||
As technology advances, the complexities surrounding deployment and support increase, causing some concern with the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). The endless permutations of hardware, software, and security constraints cause migraines for deployment managers everywhere. If you cannot get your software into the hands of your users, and easily, then what good is your software? Some tools are meant for internal use, where you often know the hardware and software profile of your target machines, but external tools that are available to the general public are a different story. External tools require additional machine profile testing, and they require an efficient way to access any software updates that are available.
There is never a single “correct solution” in regards to deployment, as the appropriateness of a solution is dependent on project-specific factors. There are, however, common techniques and approaches that can be applied to your tools when the time comes, in order to lessen the burden of deployment management.
The chapters in Part IX focus on these techniques and approaches, and show you some situations where a particular technology is an ideal match for the end solution. A couple of traditional deployment techniques are covered, as well as technology that is new to Microsoft .NET 2.0.