No-Touch Deployment in a few words

What is No-Touch Deployment?

No-Touch Deployment (short: "NTD") is Microsoft's first attempt to create a Windows Forms deployment model with similar characteristics to the deployment of today’s web applications. That means you can run .NET applications via URL (in Internet Explorer) or a link (within a webpage or a shortcut) from a Web server without having to install it. The application will be downloaded in the background and then executed on your machine – everything happens silently and without “touching” your system. Side-effects you might remember from installing software like software breaking your machine or the famous “DLL-Hell” are not possible to happen with No-Touch Deployment.

Updates

The update mechanism was also inspired by the easy of updating web applications. When you create a new version of your application you simply have to replace the file on the Web server and from that point on everyone launching your application will get the newest version.

Security

The code running from the Internet is secure by default, which means it will be executed in a so called "Sandbox" with very limited rights. This will ensure that the program cannot read or write to resources on your computer or causing damage to your machine. However you can grant certain assemblies more or all rights. This is particularly useful for companies, which can give sign all company software a digital signature and grant all rights to that signature.

Requirements

To be able to use No-Touch Deployment for your .NET applications, the client machines need to have the Microsoft .NET Framework (minimum: 1.0 SP2, recommended: 1.1) and Internet Explorer 5.0.1 or above installed. On the server side you can use any Web server that supports HTTP to host the .NET executables. Basically you can use the web space of any Web hoster.

Still got questions on No-Touch Deployment? Drop me a comment!