Going Live!

It's been a while since I last blogged on the subject of the Lawn Maintenance Calendar, now know simply as Lawn Calendar.  The plan is go live this Sunday.  Although things are pretty much ready, there are a couple of tasks that I need to complete.

Firstly, I need to create a 'down' screen that I can switch on whilst I upload and configure the site.
Secondly, I need to work how how the data migrations are going to work.  The content provider has already uploaded quite a bit of content into the system on the test hoster and I want to use that as the basis for the live database.  That way, the content provider can add images to the existing written content.  Entity framework now has a migration feature which might be just the replacement I need for the existing DropAndCreateOnModelChange strategy that is currently employed.

Update:  The launch went ahead on Sunday after a hive of activity on Saturday.

Down screen

I found that my new hoster already provides this function, so I didn't have to develop it myself this time.  It's not the most beautiful of down pages, but it will do for the time being. 

Data Migrations   

I've moved to using Entity Framework 4.3.1 which includes the migrations feature.  This now allows me to make database enhancements and upgrade without having to lose the contents of the database.  I've been very impressed with it and will be using it's scripting features to upgrade to V2 when the time comes.

Here's some useful links regarding EF 4.3. and migrations:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/adonet/archive/2012/02/09/ef-4-3-automatic-migrations-walkthrough.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/adonet/archive/2012/02/09/ef-4-3-code-based-migrations-walkthrough.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/adonet/archive/2012/01/12/ef-4-3-configuration-file-settings.aspx
http://www.ladislavmrnka.com/2012/03/ef-4-3-migrations-and-existing-database/

Uploading to hoster

This was quite straightforward for the website itself, but the database was a little trickier.  I couldn't find a way of uploading the mdf files and attaching them to the database like I could with the test site hoster. So, the only way I could get the database uploaded was to create an empty database, script and re-create the schema and then import the data using SSIS.