I've recently rebuilt my Help Desk ticketing application from the ground up, this time completely in the HTML client. It works beautifully in Debug configuration. I deployed it as a new application to the same IIS 7.5 server that is running the previous version of my application, in Release configuration as recommended. It publishes fine, and using the same authentication settings in the app and IIS (Windows Authentication, allow all users). I added a desktop client for the security administration, and set up the user groups and roles, just like I did before.
When I browse to the application, I get prompted for authentication (except in IE, which supports integrated Windows Authentication), and I see the application splash screen, as expected. After the application loads, I see my home screen, which is a Browse screen not tied to any data, just containing buttons. The buttons are hidden by default, and then appropriate buttons are revealed based on which permissions the user has. This works exactly as expected in Debug mode locally. That was accomplished using the technique presented on Beth Massi's blog. But running on the server, nothing is made visible. I see the DisplayName of the Home screen, at it's default setting. It's supposed to get changed according to the user's permissions. This also happens when I am running the application locally from VS, in Release configuration.
It seems that the queries which get the permissions don't run in Release configuration. They don't seem to fail, because failure to get my permissions should reveal the controls for the basic end user; nothing shows up.
Just for grins, I published it in Debug configuration, and it worked. So it's definitely something about the Release configuration.
I've appealed to all mighty Google for inspiration, with no luck. Does anybody out there have any thoughts?
Well, while this isn't exactly a solution to the problem, I ended up recreating the project from the ground up, and now it works fine in Release configuration. Never did figure out what was wrong with it, and I've compared the files between the "broken" project and the current live one, and I can't find any difference. I guess the old "turn it off and on again" applies here, sort of.