UltiDev Pro

[mvallevand]

Sub, I am pretty sure I have pestered you before about upgrading your internal web server to UltiDev Pro, http://ultidev.com/products/Cassini/index.htm for many reasons. It seems that as NextPVR grows the web server is becoming the foundation and it would really be nice to see if move ahead with NextPVR. One day it could very well be the weakest link. I am posting this in the developers forum, because I know it impacts, hurts and helps several devs too.

Martin

[sub]

To be honest, I'm not sure it'd be worth it. For the most the part the built in one is working well and not causing any problems, so the old 'if it ain broke...' comes to mind.

While there is some advantages to using Ultidev, there is also some major advantages I get with having the web server running in the same process as the recording service, and it'd be lot of work to get some of that stuff running in a web app in an external web server. It's also nice to having the simplified setup, and less services required etc.

[mvallevand]

Ok, to me it seems kind of like the GBPVR vs NextPVR debate where the benefits may not be seem worth the effort of upgrading now, but I understand where you are coming from since you have to actually do the work.

Martin

[reven]

installation wise, im using UltiDev Pro with visual studio 2010 setup project and you can make it a prereq, where the installer will automatically download and install UltiDev Pro for you, really easy to do.

they do recommend after you uninstall your application that you leave UltiDev Pro installed even if you did install it, in case another application is now using it.

problem with casinni is it looks like it only supports up to .net 3.5 and not 4.0 (unless their website is just out of date)

[sub]

problem with casinni is it looks like it only supports up to .net 3.5 and not 4.0 (unless their website is just out of date)

It depends who's Cassini you look at. There is a stack of webservers on the internet that mention "Cassini" in the name. They're all forks of the original sample provided by Microsoft, just like NextPVR's one is. Some of these make it sound like Cassini was something they created. These various projects are attempts at taking the original Cassini and add all sorts of things like multiple web apps, and management consoles, and web logging etc to make it feel like a more full featured web server. These aren't things we were looking for.

The Cassini I used is based on the original Microsoft code but with significant modifications by me over the years. When I eventually move to .NET 4.0, which I'm intending to do in the next few months, it'll support .NET 4.0 web apps.

For the record, Cassini is fairly simple HTTP connection handler that just delegates it's functionality to the .NET runtime's System.Web.Hosting classes.

[reven]

did not know that, thought cassini was developed by the guys behind ultidev, sweet as then keep using builtin one, that too would be my preferred solution.

ive only really worked in the corporate world where everything is running on windows sever with IIS so never had to worry about 3rd party webservers

[mvallevand]

Thanks for the explication I didn't know that about Cassini either. I guess what I was hoping for was a "real" web server in NextPVR that was a little bit more open source or at least open standards and full feature. That isn't to say the community can't do this on their own and reven's installer might be a good starting point.

Martin

[sub]

For the most part Cassini can just be treated like IIS by a web app developers, since all the ASP.NET stuff is handled by the .NET runtime in both. The only stuff that's non-standard is that I can choose to hook certain URLs and handle them natively in the recording service code, for streaming etc (rather than having to have the web app provide the functionality). I suck at web apps, so this is a big plus for me.

[reven]

I suck at web apps, so this is a big plus for me.

but webapps are so much fun to program, and always seem to get the latest and greatest technology from microsoft

im a c# developer but apparently on github 80% of the source code for my nextpvr webapp is javascript .....