How to utilize WebDev.WebServer.exe (VS Web Server) in x64?
- by Nick Craver
Visual Studio is x86 until at least the 2010 release comes around, my question is can anyone think of a way or know of an independent ASP.NET debug server that's x64 for 2008?
Background: Our ASP.NET application runs against Oracle as the DB. Since we're on 64-bit servers for memory concerns later, we need to use Oracle's 64-bit drivers (Instant Client).
Setup:
x64 OS (XP or Windows 7)
IIS (5 or 7, both x64 App Pools)
Oracle 64-bit Instant Client (Separate Directory, in the PATH)
Visual Studio 2008 SP1
In IIS the application pool runs as 64-bit, uses the Oracle drivers as intended, however since WebDev.WebServer.exe is 32-bit you'll get a BadImageFormatException because it's trying to load 64-bit driver DLLs in a 32-bit environment. All of our developers would like to be able to use the quick debug server via Visual Studio 2008, but since it runs as 32-bit we're unable to. Some problems we run into are during application startup, so although we're attaching to the IIS process sometimes that isn't enough to track an issue down.
Are there any alternatives, or work-arounds? We would like to match our Dev/Val/Prod tiers as much as possible, so everything running in x64 would be ideal.
