In today’s scenario, the Internet is the most used medium for getting information on any topic. The information available on the Internet is contained in different Web applications. To enable users to access the information contained in Web applications, these applications need to be installed on a Web server. The process of installing a Web application on a Web server is known as deployment.
While developing a Web application using Visual Studio, when you execute the application, the application is automatically deployed on Internet Information Server (IIS) Express. IIS Express makes deployment simple because it runs with our identity, and allows us to start and stop the Web server whenever required.
However, to make the Web application accessible over the Internet or an intranet, you need to host it on a full version of IIS or any other Web server. Before deploying a Web application on a Web server, you need to prepare the application for deployment. This involves certain activities. These are:
- Identify the files and folders to be copied to the destination server
- Configure Web.config transformations
- Precompile the Web application
- Test the application in an environment similar to production
Test the application in an environment similar to production
Before you deploy a Web application, you need to make sure that it is running properly. The errors occurring while the application is running need to be diagnosed and fixed. You also need to ensure that there are not any performance related issues with your Web application. As a developer, you are focused on creating a Web application that runs smoothly after its deployment. Once an application is deployed, you need to ensure that the application is working properly and is not giving unexpected results. For this, you need to keep track of the execution of your Web application. This will enable you to track any errors or performance-related issues in your application.
There are various platforms like ASP.NET, which provides you with the tracing feature that enables you to track the program execution, thereby ensuring that your Web application runs properly. You can use this feature to view diagnostic information about a particular Web page. This information includes the execution time of page methods, the time spent rendering page controls, and the contents of various collections, such as the query string, HTTP header, and session state.
In addition to the standard diagnostic information, tracing can also be used to display custom tracing information about the execution of an application. Tracing information can also be written to an event log or a text file by using trace listeners.
After deploying a Web application, you, as a system administrator, need to constantly monitor it for its proper functioning. Many unexpected problems, such as website experiencing heavy load, may occur while the application is running in the real-world environment. By monitoring a Web application, you can detect the problems occurring in the application and troubleshoot them.
