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Software update management

I am looking at different ways to handle updating an ASP.NET application from many different clients and looking for suggestions from your previous experience.

  • We need client apps to check if they have any updates available.
  • A way to automatically update (if possible, something similar to chromates, but for a webapp).
  • How to check that we are sending updates. (Checksum of some kind, I would guess)
  • Other tips / advice

thanks

Edit: After thinking about it overnight, I have to agree that automatic updates might not be the best. However, there is perhaps something more similar to how Wordpress does it. Wordpress will indicate that there is an available update, after which a click will automatically update the system.

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I would not have an automatic update of your application on clients (assuming you mean clients - entities external to your organization). We would immediately stop using the product that would "call home" and update. Clients should be able to choose when and how the update occurs on their server.



If you do this, the simplest way would be to set up a URI that systems can ping once a day, etc. and see if there are any updates available. If so, the application will pull it out of the host system and update it. If you do this using SSL then the certificate will verify that the URI that was hit is your company.

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It is not easy to figure out if you are really talking about a web app or a desktop app. If you're trying to do something similar to Chrome ... I'm guessing about a desktop app. If that's the case ... check your ClickOnce deployment.

It offers the first three points you mentioned:



  • Every time the user launches the application, it checks for updates.
  • If updates are found, the user can install them or not (better than customization rather than force update).
  • The app always checks the url from which the app was installed ... which in your case will be your server.
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