publish vs package via tfsbuild

Question

I am currently integrating in web deploy package publish via visual studio and tfs bulid 2010 and have some questions:

• For different environments, is a Publish profile needed for each?
• As part of the publish is it possible to execute a generated database against a database?
• Within the publish profile is it possible to create an application pool, web site, configure it etc if it doesn't previously exist?
• Re tfs build - is it possible to click a button to deploy a successful build based on a selected publish profile?

Thanks for any feedback!

Answer 1

I know you're trying to use webdeploy, although most enterprise architecture will use other tooling. I suggest using powershell remoting tools. This gives you the full power of the .NET framework to do database deployments using whatever tools you want.

I usually create different transforms to transform the configuration files. Depending on what environment you deploy to you can use the appropriate transform that matches your environment or manipulate the transform as desired.