Deployment from an external app.

imwscom

Hi,

I'm developing an intranet project process tracking application and one of the features I'd like to implement is the ability to publish a site from within the application. Although I don't have any experience with OpenDeploy, I do know that one of the companies I plan on selling this application to is using (or will be soon) OpenDeploy. So, I'm shooting in the dark a little here. I have experience with MS Site Server's content replication services and will base some of my assumptions on that (and a few of the posts I've read here as well). I'd read the documentation, but it appears to be under lock and key on the support site.

Knowing how this company (my future client) had things set up in Site Server, they had a several full sites they setup separate deployment projects for, in addition to a few deployment projects with specific directories they'd push for other specific needs. My first assumption is that OpenDeploy is pretty much set up the same way. Projects are defined, include or exclude what you want and say where you want that project to deploy.. is this right so far?

So, assuming they'll have projects all setup already, is there a way I could have a project deploy based on user input on my application (which will live on a different server than OpenDeploy). Without knowing anything further of OpenDeploy, it sounds as if there might be a web page I could have my ASP application call that would deploy the project. Would something like that work? And, if so, will that page display some sort of confirmation/error message that my application could parse out and give to my user? Sorta setup like a dirty-web service.

And, if I'm way off base, what are the recommendations?

Thanks,
Zk

Migrateduser

First, I can tell you that we have OpenDeploy customers who have successfully replaced their SiteServer implementations. So you're using the right product (says the OpenDeploy product manager.) ;-)

As for invoking deployments from your app to provision updates and then obtain status, there are several mechanisms available to you:

Invocation and scheduling of jobs can be initiated via command line tools. (There's also an admin UI for this.) A web services API is coming in the next release (beta to come out shortly.)

Status of jobs can be obtained via the command line tool response code, by parsing the log files, or by making a SQL call into the reporting database. (Again, UI is also available for obtaining this info.) The upcoming web services API will enable you to obtain job status programmatically.

Hope that gives you some direction.

Todd Scallan
Director of Product Management
Interwoven
t: 408-530-7167
e: tscallan@interwoven.com