BizTalk Deployment Framework 5: Upgrade to a deployed application fails

Question

Reading the "Upgrading a deployed application" in the BTDF docs, I get the impression that the installer would upgrade a deployed application. After changing the ProductId and ProductVersion (as required), I ran the new installer twice with no success. The objective is to upgrade a deployed application without undeploying/uninstalling the application. Is that even possible? The docs are unclear about that. Here is the description of the steps I took with the results.

1. For the first time, I ran the installer and once it was done, I ran the deployment wizard. The deployed wizard error-ed out suggesting to specify a unique application name (the application was already deployed so i understand the conflict).

2. The second time, i ran the installer and when it finished. I did not launch the deployment wizard thinking it would update the GAC with the new DLLs and BizTalk would detect the updated dlls and would reset the process. No luck either.

Would someone, please, explain the process? The goal, again, is to upgrade a deployed application without undeploying/uninstalling it.

Answer 1

The BTDF dev team answered the question on Codeplex.

http://biztalkdeployment.codeplex.com/discussions/393259

Answer 2

I have to say I only have experience deploying applications from Visual Studio to a Biztalk Server and none using an actual installer yet. However, I've solved most of my deploy problems by doing a full stop of the Biztalk application before deploying. Not sure if this will help you or not, but worth a try if you haven't yet (there is no mention of it in the question).

Also, what kind of changes are you making and how do you know they have not taken place after install/deploying? I know in the past I've had to restart the host instance in order for Map changes to be recognized on the server.