Intersoft WebCombo Documentation
Easy SmartWebResources Deployment
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Intersoft WebCombo > WebCombo Features Overview > Features Added in WebCombo 4 > Easy SmartWebResources Deployment

Glossary Item Box

Often times, developers found it too complicated to deploy their web applications that used third party components. There are too much things to prepare to deploy the applications successfully. For instances, the Javascript files, images and other runtime client files need to be copied to proper folders in order for the components to run properly.

One of the goals in the latest Intersoft's product lineups is to simplify the deployment process of Intersoft's ASP.NET controls. Our approach is by providing a new infrastructure that handles the storage and retrieval system of these client resources, thus the physical files can be completely eliminated. This new infrastructure is called SmartWebResources™.

WebCombo version 4.0 fully supports SmartWebResources infrastructure. This enables WebCombo to function right out-of-the-box after a simple XCOPY deployment.

Both developers and site administrators can now deploy Intersoft's components by simply copying the assemblies in the Bin folder of the project to the web server - without requiring to copy the Javascript files, component-specific images and other runtime files.

To learn how to configure SmartWebResources, see How-to: Configure SmartWebResources in a new web application.

New SmartWebResources™ Framework

At Intersoft Solutions, we constantly conduct extensive research and development to deliver new innovations that help developers become more productive by reducing the efforts and complexity in both development and deployment stage.

The brand-new SmartWebResources™ Framework is one of the powerful technology available in the latest WebUI Framework. The key objective of SmartWebResources™ is to eliminate external physical resources such as scripts, images, and so forth - which are required by the web components to function properly.

Common Problems in Traditional Web Components

Most web components require client resources such as scripts, images, style sheets and other client files to enable some advanced and powerful features. Normally these client resources are delivered through physical client files. In ASP.NET, these files may be located in aspnet_client folder or other common folder which needs to be mapped properly into an IIS virtual path in order to function properly.

There are several issues with this traditional approach which causing inefficiency, such as:

The Solution: SmartWebResources

The solution to the several issues mentioned above can be achieved by eliminating the requirements to use physical client resources. Thanks to the new SmartWebResources™ Framework, the physical client resources can be completely eliminated.

The client resources are still required in our web components. It is just they are now stored in "virtual location" which does not require the awareness of developers. They are fetched and delivered to client (browsers) in a new, different way.

How Does SmartWebResources Work

Each product has their own resources such as scripts and images. For instance, previously these resources are stored in /CommonLibrary/Shared for core framework resources. WebGrid's resources are stored in /CommonLibrary/WebGrid/v4_0_6200.

With SmartWebResources, they are now embedded into .NET assembly. Unlike ASP.NET's built-in Web Resources which embeds client resources in main assembly, SmartWebResources stores each product's client resources in separate assembly. This enables flexible update (maintenance) to the client resources without has to rebuild the main server-side assembly.
SmartWebResources implements each product's client resources as separate resources assembly. Each product that supports SmartWebResources technology will have a companion resources assembly. The resources assembly commonly has this format: [ProductAssemblyFullName].Resources.dll.
 
For instance, the assembly hierarchy for WebCombo looks like the following illustration:


The SmartWebResources works by intercepting the HTTP requests through a custom HTTP handler which is extended in the Framework runtime. The SmartWebResources will then dispatch the requests and automatically determines the correct resources assembly, then finally fetching the resource from the assembly and deliver it to the client.
 
The way it works can be seen in the following illustration:

 
With SmartWebResources enabled, you no longer need to aware what you should do to configure the client scripts virtual directory, or where to locate/store it. You simply ensure that the resources assemblies are in the Bin folder of your application. For more information, read How-to: Configure SmartWebResources in a new web application. 

Features And Benefits

The following list describes the features and benefits of SmartWebResources deployment architecture.

FAQ

FAQ: Does SmartWebResources feature automatically enabled in WebCombo 4.0?

By default, Intersoft 2007 product lineups have the SmartWebResources set to Automatic mode. This automatic mode ensures compatibility with existing web application when developers migrated to 2007 platform, while at the same time attempting to utilize SmartWebResources in new web application whenever possible.

When you created a new web application and started to use WebCombo version 4.0, the SmartWebResources is not configured initially. With the automatic mode as default behavior, WebCombo will use physical resources since the SmartWebResources has not been configured.

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