Basics
Product Tour
Features
Resources
Buy
Customer Support

  • Contents
  • Index
  • Glossary
Iron Speed Designer Help
 

Step 6: Name Your Application

Use the Application Settings step to select your application’s name and type.(advanced view)

The last step in creating a new application is to give it a name and location for its files.  Additionally, you can choose the type of application to create and several other high-level options.

Related

Application Name and Folder Selection

.NET Application Type

Code Language and .NET Framework Selection

Visual Studio for Solution file

SQL Statement Generation

Namespace and Virtual Directory Selection

Page Location

 

Application Name and Folder Selection

Field

Description

Application Name

The name of your application is used for identification purposes and as a prefix in certain parts of your application, including:

  • A prefix for your application’s database stored procedures.

  • A tag prefix (i.e. namespace) for server controls tags in your application’s ASPX and ASCX files.

Please note that if you pick any of these application names:

  • ASP

  • IronSpeed

then the prefix will be changed to App<NAME>.  This prevents a name collision with ASP and IronSpeed presentation-level control tags.

Names must start with a letter and can contain letters and numbers (alphanumeric strings).

Note: You cannot change your application’s name after the application has been created.  Changing the application name would require Iron Speed Designer to update all of your web pages and source code files (because the name space defaults to the application name), which is difficult to do without breaking customizations you might have made to the page and source code files.

Application Folder

The folder location where you wish to place your application’s files.

Please note: it is possible to accidentally overwrite the virtual directories used by Microsoft IIS, so use caution when selecting a folder name.

IISAdmin

IISHelp

IISSamples

 

.NET Application Type

Your application can be structured internally in different ways, depending on how it is to be used.

Web Site for .NET

This option uses the folder-based structure defined for .NET Web applications, with its content defined by all files and folders under a root application folder.  This organization makes explicit assumptions about the ~/App_Code, ~/App_Data, ~/App_GlobalResources, and ~/bin folders.

The Web Site is not compiled for deployment and pages are compiled dynamically at run-time when they are accessed using a .NET Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler.  Iron Speed Designer also provides the option of pre-compiling a Web Site if it is targeted for deployment to a Microsoft IIS web server. Compilation uses the .NET Framework compilers (VBC/CSC) and is driven by the placement of code files in the application's special directories.

In the Web Site, external DLLs are included in the application by placing them in the \bin folder, where they are automatically referenced during compilation.

Web Application for .NET

This option organizes your application using the solution/project structure used by Visual Studio.  Initially the solution (your application) contains three projects: the Main project, the Data Access Layer, and the Business Layer.  The Web Application is compiled using Visual Studio and the compiled content is deployed to the web server.  The Data Access and Business Layers are the implementation of the abstract layers described in the Iron Speed Designer Application Architecture document.

In Web Applications, compilation is controlled by the application project file, e.g.:

<AppName>.vbproj (.csproj)

Visual Studio is used for compilation and if not available, the .NET Framework compilers (VBC/CSC) are used.

External DLLs are included in the application by using Visual Studio to add a reference to the DLL in the project.

Additional references

Web Application Projects Overview:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa983474(VS.80).aspx

Shared Code Folders in ASP.NET Web Sites:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/t990ks23(VS.80).aspx

VS 2005 Web Deployment Projects:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2005/11/06/429723.aspx

VS 2008 Web Deployment Project Support Released:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/01/28/vs-2008-web-deployment-project-support-released.aspx

Web Deployment Projects:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163448.aspx

Web application project vs. web site:

http://vishaljoshi.blogspot.com/2009/08/web-application-project-vs-web-site.html

 

Code Language and .NET Framework Selection

Compilation and application building options govern how your application is compiled. 

Code Language

Select the programming language for code created by Iron Speed Designer.

Note: You can change your application’s code language after it has been created.  However, any modifications you make to the source code files will not be migrated to the updated application; you must port any code customizations by hand after switching code languages.

.NET Framework

Iron Speed Designer builds application targeting the following .NET Frameworks: 3.5, 4.0, 4.5. In some cases, the .NET Framework version you select automatically designates the compiler you must use to compile your application.

Note: Applications are not backward compatible.  For example, once you have created an application using .NET Framework 4.5, you will not be able to switch to .NET Framework 4.0.

.NET Framework 4.0 caveats

The .NET Framework 4.0 Client Profile does not include these features:

  • ASP.NET

  • Advanced Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) functionality

  • .NET Framework Data Provider for Oracle

  • MSBuild for compiling

You must install the .NET Framework 4.0 to use these features in your application.  The full .NET Framework 4.0 can be downloaded from:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0A391ABD-25C1-4FC0-919F-B21F31AB88B7&displaylang=en

Compiler

Field

Description

.NET Framework 3.5

Compile your application for .NET Framework 3.5.  This is compatible with Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2010.

.NET Framework 4.0

Compile your application for .NET Framework 4.0.  This is compatible with Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio 2012, Visual Studio 2013.

.NET Framework 4.5

Compile your application for .NET Framework 4.5.  This is compatible with Visual Studio 2012, Visual Studio 2013.
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET

Iron Speed Designer does not require you to use any particular integrated development environment, such as Microsoft Visual Studio .NET.

Asp .NET Development Server

Iron Speed Designer can run your application using either ASP.NET Development Server or the Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS). ASP.NET Development Server is used as a a generic term in Iron Speed Desiner, referring to the original ASP.NET Development Server, called Cassini, or to its replacement IIS Express in Framework 4.5.

 

Visual Studio for Solution file

Select the Visual Studio version for which the application will be created. The solution/project files for your application will be generated based on the version of Visual Studio selected. Compilation and generation of deployment will take place using the selected Visual Studio. The capabilities of the Visual Studio will apply to the application. For instance, creating a Framework 4.0 application using Visual Studio 2012 will not allow MSI installer creation, using publishing in Visual Studio for deployment instead. The following table shows the .Net Framework and Visual Studio combinations allowed.

Application Type

Framework

Visual Studio

Website/Web Application

3.5

2008, 2010

Website/Web Application

4.0

2010, 2012, 2013

Website/Web Application

4.5

2012, 2013

SharePoint 2007

3.5

2008

SharePoint 2010

3.5

2008

 

SQL Statement Generation

Specifies where and how to create your application’s SQL.  Iron Speed Designer automatically creates all the SQL statements required for each database-connected form, web page, table, and report in your application, as well as all the database access logic and storage management code.  You do not need to know any SQL to build applications in Iron Speed Designer.  The SQL is based on your database schema and user interface design.  A variety of data filters and navigation components provide your application users with additional viewing and reporting flexibility.

Option

Description

Inline

Build the application using inline SQL statements.  The SQL is placed in the Data Access Layer code.  Inline SQL generation, also called “dynamic SQL” is frequently used when your application must connect to a database that does not support stored procedures.

Stored procedures

Build the application’s SQL in database-stored procedures.  The stored procedures are automatically loaded into your database.  Stored procedures are frequently the best choice when overall performance is important, because stored procedures generally execute faster than inline SQL.
Can’t create stored procedures in all cases

Iron Speed Designer may not be able to create stored procedures in all cases, even though you have selected this option.  In these cases, Iron Speed Designer will create inline SQL.  For example, Iron Speed Designer cannot create stored procedures for Microsoft Access databases, a database product which does not support stored procedures.  Also, Iron Speed Designer will not create stored procedures in cases where it detects your database access credentials do not have sufficient permissions to load stored procedures into the database or execute them once there.

Other reasons why Iron Speed Designer can’t create stored procedures include:

  • Your database is “read only”.  Check your database permissions to see if any setting has changed to make it read-only, which means stored procedures will not be created.

  • Your database tables or views are missing primary keys or Virtual Primary Keys.  Check if the changes made to your database views render them capable of having stored procedures created.  For example, a view without a Virtual Primary Key cannot have an Update stored procedure created.

  • The Stored Procedures option is set to 'true' in the <App Name>.config file.
    <add key="GenerateStoredProcedures" value="True" />

Stored procedure owner

Iron Speed Designer creates stored procedures using the user name you provide to log into the database.  We recommend you select the final user name you want to use in production.  For example, this is frequently ‘dbo’ for Microsoft SQL Server databases.

Optimistic Concurrency Support

Iron Speed Designer generates dynamic SQL and Stored procedures to supports optimistic concurrency. I.e. if record has been changed after it was opened in the browser data access layer will prevent it from saving and give the application user a warning. You can override this behavior for dynamic SQL and force Data Access layer to save record without checking by setting SupportConcurrency key to False in the web.config.

 

Namespace and Virtual Directory Selection

Field

Description

Application Namespace

The name space is used when creating the Presentation Layer and Data Access Layer code.  It generally is the same as the Application Name, though there is no requirement that this be the case.

Name space restrictions:

The name space should not contain non-ASCII characters, such as European or Asian characters.

Iron Speed Designer creates code with namespaces such as, MyApp1.UI.Controls.XXXX, MyApp1.Business, and MyApp1.Data where MyApp1 is aApplication namespace you select here.  However, this namespace it is not the root namespace.  When your code refers to a particular class, you should specify the full namespace such as MyApp1.Data.Class1.

Note: You cannot change your application’s name space after the application has been created.  Changing the application name space would require Iron Speed Designer to update all of your web pages and source code files (because the name space defaults to the application name), which is difficult to do without breaking customizations you might have made to the page and source code files.

Virtual directory name

You can specify the virtual directory name for your application.  By default it is the same as your application name, but you can change it at any time, even after creating the application.  If you change it after a virtual directory has already been created for the application, a new virtual directory will be created when running the application.

 

Page Location

 

Option

Description

Page location

The file folder location where the pages are created.

<Table Name>

Each group of pages is created in a new folder bearing the table’s name.

Existing folder

Select an existing folder to place the new pages.

The Application Wizard only creates pages in sub-folders one level below the application's root folder.  It will not, at present, accommodate a multi-level folder structure.