We have a case to deploy Cassini (both Explorer and ASP .NET 2.0 Web Server) with out application and register the application, all done during installation of our application. While we use InstallShield to install our application, we trigger Cassini Explorer and Web Server MSI through our InstallScript.

Adding to this, our Installer class registers our application with Cassini, using .Net reflection. Reflection is employed here, as we cannot reference to CassiniConfiguration assembly both at Compile time and runtime of our Installation.

So the code piece as below.
Assembly cassiniConfigurationAssembly = Assembly.LoadFrom(CASSINI_CONFIGURATION_ASSEMBLY_PATH);
Type metabaseType = cassiniConfigurationAssembly.GetType("CassiniConfiguration.Metabase");

if (metabaseType != null)
{
MethodInfo registerApplicationMethod =
metabaseType.GetMethod("RegisterApplication",
new Type[] { typeof(Guid),
typeof(string),
typeof(string),
typeof(string),
typeof(string),
typeof(bool)});

registerApplicationMethod.Invoke(metabaseType,
new Object[] { new Guid(APPLICATION_GUID),
"Name",
"Description",
"Path",
"Default Document",
true });
}

Considering that we pass proper values to all parameters, our application gets registered to Cassini (i.e. no exception);

We have two different observation here, which are not very consistent but can well be reproduced with little effort.
Observation One - Launch Cassini Explorer, it fails to launch. Perform restart of Cassini Windows Service and re-try to launch Cassini Explorer, it launches and displays our application as a Registered application.

Observation Two - Launch Cassini Explorer, it launches and displays our application as Registered application. Click on the application hyperlink in Cassini Explorer, the application fails to launch. Perform restart of Cassini Windows Service and re-try the operation (click on application hyperlink). Our application launches successfully.

We are very confused with this behavior. See if you can help us.

Thank you for immediate feedback.

Log information was very usefull. Here is our observation analyzing the Application Event logs, we traced two issues.

Issue 1 (minor);
Sequence of installing Cassini Explorer and Cassini Web Server matters; i.e. consider a machine without Cassini, and observe the following.
Install Cassini Web Server. There is an error log as “Skipped loading application "UltiDev Cassini Web Server Explorer" because its folder "C:\Program Files\UltiDev\Cassini Web Server Explorer" does not exist.”
Install Cassini Explorer. There are information logs as “Cassini service restarts itself due to metabase change.
Metabase Services:
Application: UltiDev Cassini Web Server Explorer, Port: 7756, CLR Version: 1.1”

Looks like a sanity check from Cassini Web Server, but still we have changed the order through our installer, as all Quality gates start complainign while they see 'Error' logs.

Issue 2 (major);
Registering our application with Cassini was done during ‘Install’ event; We opted to choose “Always keep application in memory to improve first page response time ”; this is passed on as a Boolean parameter to RegisterApplication method. As we are still in install phase, its highly possible that our application is yet to be completely deployed. i.e. all applications files are not yet deployed into target machine.

But as we choose to use ‘keepRunning’; Cassini attempts to immediately load the application and results into error (logged) as
“Exception information:
Exception type: ConfigurationErrorsException
Exception message: Could not load file or assembly '***' (removed for privacy reasons) or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. (*** (data removed for privacy reasons))

This has been fixed by moving the application registration process from ‘Install’ phase to ‘OnCommitted’ phase. Oncommitted event is raised when all the installer files have completed their operation; it is more towards the very end of an installation. By this time, all our application files will be deployed into the target machine.

Thank you again for the support.