Maintaining ASP.NET application

[bizz]

I must have missed something in my experience with .net, since there
is not a lot of questions about this...After I completed my ASP.NET
application, it was put on the live server and runs fine. Then I turn
the app over to a maintenance staff. Everytime an update needs to be
made to the site, we have to do a build and recopy over the whole .dll
file. It does not allow us to incrementally make changes to the site
and deploy things as they are ready.

For example, I needed to change a simple line on a code behind page,
but another developer was halfway through working on a large module.
I had to wait until he was done to get my changes live. It is really
not good, as with asp we could put up files as we were ready.

I am on the brink of deciding which language to use for a $200,000
project, but if I cannot incrementally deploy my solution, asp it is.

Thanks, Bizz

 

[Itai Raz]

Here's the situation:
Codebehind is stored in your application dll. If the codebehind changes, it
means recompiling the solution, and getting a new application dll. Things
that are not in the codebehind (ASPX controls and alike) can be changed on
the fly in the ASPX pages, and they will immediately change. This is the way
compiled languages usually work, and you can't avoid it. You can avoid using
codebehind altogether, but I don't see why you'd want to do something like
this. For a $200K project I don't know how you can use a non-compiled
language, really.

In any occasion, the situation you're describing has to do more with source
control methodology than anything else. Sounds like you need to devise some
coding methodologies, so that if two developers are working on two different
things, they do not interrupt with one another, and if you want to release
stuff in phases, you are able. There are standard methodologies for this
type of activity, and usually people who work on $200K project are aware of
them ;-)

--itai