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Deployment Components

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Crystal Reports for Visual Studio supports deployment projects that enable you to deploy your application to target machines. The deployment projects used are Setup Project for Windows Applications or Web Setup Project for Web Sites.

To distribute a Visual Studio application that uses Crystal reports, the deployment project needs the following components, depending on the type of deployment you are performing:

Project Output Assemblies, binaries and support files from the project necessary to deploy the application to client machines.
Report Files Embedded or non-embedded reports to be distributed to client machines.
Crystal Reports Runtime Component that enable clients to view applications that use Crystal reports.
.NET Framework .NET components that are necessary for an application to run. In the case of ClickOnce Deployment, only the .Net Framework 2.0 is applicable.

Note

Crystal Reports Basic for Visual Studio 2008 supports the .Net 3.0 and 3.5 framework.

Windows Installer deployment

When you are deploying an application using Windows Installer deployment, you are copying all the application files and .rpt files from the development machine to the target machine separately from other third-party components.

The additional third-party components that you need to deploy for your application to work are the Crystal Reports assemblies. The Crystal Reports assemblies are the dll files that are required to view, export and print a report. These assemblies are deployed as a separate .msi file from the application files and .rpt files.

If you are deploying a ASP .NET web site, the application files you include in your deployment project are the following:

  • Aspx files
  • Aspx.cs or Aspx.vb files
  • Images, html, or css files

If you are deploying a windows application, the application files you include in your deployment project are the following:

  • Form.cs or Form.vb files
  • Form.Designer.cs or Form.Designer.vb files
  • Resources.resx
  • Resources.Designer.cs or Resources.Designer.vb
  • Images, html, or css files

Figure 6: Windows Installer Deployment Components

ClickOnce deployment

When you are deploying a Windows application using ClickOnce deployment., you are copying all the application files and .rpt files to a web server separately from the .NET Framework, which are also copied to the same web server. You can then install the latest version of the application onto your target machine from a common web page. The application files you include in your deployment project are the following:

  • Form.cs or Form.vb files
  • Form.Designer.cs or Form.Designer.vb files
  • Resources.resx
  • Resources.Designer.cs or Resources.Designer.vb
  • Images, html, or css files

Figure 7: ClickOnce Deployment Components

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