Walkthrough: Deploying ActiveReports Web Applications

With ActiveReports for .NET 2.0 Professional Edition, Web applications can be set up for deployment by including the ActiveReports deployment .msm file in your Visual Studio deployment project.

This walkthrough illustrates how to create a deployment project in ActiveReports for a Web application.

This walkthrough is split up into the following activities:

Adding an installer project to an existing ActiveReports web solution
Adding the ActiveReports .msm file
Adding the ActiveReports application to the installer
Deploying the installer application to a Web server

Note: In order to successfully deploy an ActiveReports Web project, the server must have the following installed.

Microsoft .NET Framework Version 1.0, 1.1, or 2.0

IIS (Internet Information Services) Version 5.1 or 6.0

ASP.NET Version 1.0, 1.1, or 2.0 (must be the same version as the Framework)

Adding an installer project to an existing ActiveReports project

Important: If you are using Visual Studio.NET 2005, please see the Visual Studio.NET 2005 Web Changes topic.

To add the installer project

Open an existing ActiveReports project or create a new report.
On the Build menu, click "Build [your ActiveReports web project name]" to build your report project.
On the File menu, select Add Project and click on New Project...
Under Project Types in the Add New Project dialog, select Setup and Deployment Projects.
In the Templates window, select Web Setup Project, rename the file and click OK.
Select the Installer project in Solution Explorer. In the Properties window, select the ProductName property and type in the name of your file.
Note The ProductName property determines the name that will be displayed for the application in folder names and in the Add/Remove Programs dialog box.

Adding the ActiveReports .msm file

To add the ActiveReports .msm file

Right-click on the Installer project in Solution Explorer.
Click on Add and then click Merge Module...
Open the Deployment folder where ActiveReports for .NET 2.0 is installed (e.g. c:\\program files\Data Dynamics\ActiveReports for .NET 2.0\Deployment).
Click on "ActiveReportsDistrib.msm" to select it and click Open.
This adds all of the ActiveReports distributed assemblies to your web project.

Note: Since the Setup and Deployment project will automatically detect and add any assembly dependencies to your project and the .msm file adds all ActiveReports assemblies, you will need to exclude any duplicate ActiveReports DLLs from the "Detected Dependencies" folder in the Solution Explorer window.

Adding the ActiveReports application to the installer

To add the ActiveReports application

Select the Installer project in Solution Explorer.
In the File System Editor, choose the Web Application folder.
On the Action menu, select Add, Project Output...
In the Add Project Output Group dialog, choose your ActiveReports project name from the drop-down list.
Select "Primary Output" and "Content Files" from the list and click OK.
Select the Web Application folder. In the Properties window, set the VirtualDirectory property to "xyz".
In the Properties window, set the DefaultDocument property to "WebForm1.aspx".
On the Build menu, click "Build [your Installer project name]" to build your Installer project.

Deploying the installer application to a Web server

To deploy the installer application

In Solution Explorer, select the Web Installer project.
On the Project menu, click Install.
To access the Web application that was deployed, start Internet Explorer and enter the URL: http://localhost/xyz.

Note: If you are using the WebViewer control in your application, you must also set up the HTTP Handlers.

Tasks: Visual Studio.NET 2005 Web Changes