Publish application over network using Silverlight Viewer?

BarryGuidry

Is it possible to publish a web application with the Silverlight Viewer to a web server root directory remotely? In other words, I have access to ArcGIS Server Manager on a remote, and virtual, server from my desktop. I can easily publish map services / web applications through the Server Manager interface. I also have access to the "www-root" directory on the web server from my desktop / network. If I were to install the Silverlight Viewer on my desktop would it be possible to publish the Silverlight web application remotely over the network to the web server "root" directory given this setup?

RichZwaap

The problem I have is that we have an IT policy that we cannot have IIS (or any web server) on any machines but designated servers.

Well that's unfortunate.  Since the Application Builder is a web application, it can only be installed on a machine with a web server (specifically IIS).

But, if I access the Silverlight Builder remotely...I shouldn't need a local web server right?

Correct.  If the Viewer is installed on another server, you'll be able to access and use the Application Builder in your browser - provided that you have access to the Application Builder site from your machine.

I should also add that, while this doesn't help in your particular case, it is possible to configure the Application Builder to deploy applications to another server.  This can be done as follows:

1. On the machine that apps are going to be deployed to, create a network share that maps to the folder that will contain the apps.
2. On the shared folder, grant write access to the account that will be used to deploy the applications.  Note that this is the account that the Application Builder's IIS application pool will be run under.
3. On the machine where Application Builder is installed, open IIS Manager and modify the identity of the SilverlightViewerAppPool application pool to match the user account that was granted write access in the previous step.
4. On disk, navigate to and open the Application Builder's web.config file.  With a default intallation of Windows, IIS, and the Viewer, the path to the web.config would be C:\inetpub\wwwroot\Builder\web.config.
5. In the web.config, find the AppsBaseUrl and AppsPhysicalDir keys.  Update the value of the AppsPhysicalDir key to specify the path to the network share (e.g. \\machine_name\apps).  Update the AppsBaseUrl value to specify the URL that maps to the network share (e.g. http://machine_name/apps/).

Also, any Viewer applications created with the Application Builder can be moved to another server just by copying the folder containing the app.  The folder name will match the name given to the app at the time it was deployed.

Hope this helps.