The Blog at Jumptree, a guide to project management, business, coding and anything else that we can think of.

Previously, we blogged about Microsoft Platform Installer (MS PI) and
the few lessons we learned while packaging up Jumptree to be installable by MS PI.

Since then, we had a few questions on how exactly do we use the MS
PI GUI to install the package on IIS 7, today we’ll walk  you through it
and hopefully make it a little more easier.

Disclaimer: While Jumptree is compatible with Microsoft Platform Installer, it’s not officially supported.

Before we get started, first make sure you created an empty database, in our case, we created an empty database called “V12SP1”.

Step 1: Install Microsoft Platform Installer.

Step 2: Open up your IIS Manager (Control Panel –> Administrative Tools –> IIS Manager)

Step 3: Click on “Import Application” Link on the right under “Deploy” Section and navigate to Jumptree release file

*Tips:  Make sure you clicked on the “Default Web Site” on the left panel or else, “Deploy” section won’t show up

Step 4: Select the Contents of the Package, use everything default

Step 5: Select a “Database” . (“Use Existing Database”)

*Note: Use existing database is the safest  and works both on SQL server 2000, 2005, and 2008. However, during our testing, for some reasons, “Create New Database” only works with 2005 and above. Does not work with Sql server 2000.

Step 6: Enter Application Package Information

You can modify the values as needed such as the virtual directory name “Jumptree”. Your database IP address, database name, user name / password, etc. Just make sure your user name has the sufficient privileges to create tables, procedures and etc. (DB_Owner)

Step 7: Installation Progress and Summary

Step 8: License file and Installer

First, if you are an customer and you installed the purchased version, then please drop your license file into [Installation Directory]/APP_Data/ directory.

If you are installing a trial version, then you do not have to do the previous.

For security purpose, you need to disable the installer after it’s done, so please open up web.config and find


<add key="enableinstaller" value="true" />


and change it to


<add key="enableinstaller" value="false" />


Step 9: Login

If your virtual directory is /Jumptree, then go to

http://localhost/Jumptree/login.aspx

username/password : admin/admin

Thanks and hope you have fun and be productive with Jumptree

Sasha Sydoruk asks, “Where are all the cool startups that run on ASP.NET?”

Well I’m not sure if we’re considered cool enough, but we choose ASP.NET over Java for a variety of reasons.

ASP.NET is easier to setup and deploy

Since Jumptree Project is download software, we needed to ensure that we could readily support our customer’s installation and deployment process.

Have you ever run into problems deploying a Java application and then having to spend hours going through your configuration files and resolving library conflicts? Fun!

Java may be multi-platform, but there are numerous middleware implementations of J2EE—each with its own quirks. So instead of spending time improving your application, you end up having to answer support calls on why your Tomcat application doesn’t work on IBM Websphere.

With .NET, the environment is pretty much standard—so it’s a lot easier for us to provide support.

Read the rest of this entry »