Working with a remote server

[Graham Long]

Hi there,

I wonder if someone would be kind enough to describe to me the basic
procedure for working with ADO.NET, Visual Studio.NET 2003 and an
Access 2000 database to and from my ISP's server? I'd really
appreciate some help, as I've been trying to work through this for
days now, and I can't seem to find a help file that talks me through
my specific situation...(I'm using Win 2000, BTW)

I've created a simple web project at http://localhost/WebApplication1.
I've dragged the appropriate 'Data' icons onto a webform to create an
OleDbDataAdapter and an OleDbConnection to a database that's in this
directory. I've generated a new dataset, filled it and bound it to the
load event for the form. When I preview the aspx form in a browser I
see the dataset and all is fine. So far so good.

My problem comes with moving the project to my ISP's server. I'm
reasonably confident that all is set up properly with .NET1.1 at their
end. How do I transfer my project to the server?

I've tried simply FTPing the project to the ISP's folder, but
references to my local machine's C:/Inetpub/wwwroot folder are not
updated. I've also tried using Visual Studio's Project-Copy Project,
but with similar results.

I think I need to somehow map my C:/Inetpub/wwwroot/WebApplication
folder to my server's http://myCompany.com/WebApplication folder, so
that the links are updated. However, I can't Map Network Drive because
the ISP's server drive isn't part of my physical LAN - the Map Network
drive won't accept a http:// prefix?. The ISP folks said I needed a
DNS(?) for my database, but I don't know how to use it. It's of the
form: \\NAS1\Home\A\AHI647\data\myDatabase.mdb. I presume that my web
project is in a folder on the ISP's server called
\\NAS1\Home\A\AHI647\www\WebApplication2\

One thing I've tried is to create the project on the remote server
itself, connecting via the Frontpage server extensions. While I can
connect and see the files online (or at least in the VSWebCache
subdirectory on my local machine), the connection the database, while
appearing to be on the ISP's directory is actually linking to a temp
file on my local drive. My gut tells me this isn't the way to approach
things...?

As you can see, I'm getting in a bit of a pickle here. Please help!!

Many thanks for any response.

Graham

 

[CT]

Hmm, if you can publish your files to the ISP foldern that's good. Now,
think you then might have a problem with your Access database, but that's
fixable, if you remove the absolute path from wherever it's used and replace
it with a relative path. If you've placed the Access db in the same folder
as the executable, there's no need to specify a path, you simple supply the
name of the DB. Have you looked at the various properties of your data
controls, and/or the code to see if this might help you?

 

[Graham Long]

Thanks Carsten,

I did this, and found yet another barrier in my
remote-connecting-to-Access-saga (big sigh):

"Error while trying to run project: Unable to map the debug start page
URL to a machine name. Unable to map the debug start page URL to a
machine name"

I'll work my way through the MSDN and Google archives before I get
back to you, if that's OK?

Thanks,

Graham