InfoPath Dev

I've created this form template on my development machine in a virtual environment. It all works well and good. The plan is to eventually use this Form on a MOSS server in our Production environment. In my development environment, I publish the form / Upload the Form etc....using the Virtual machine names of course. In the publishing wizard it asks for a URL of the server that Form Services is running. Well, that URL is going to be different in the Production environment. So how does one go about publishing and uploading the Form's .xsn file this in that situation? 

Our production MOSS server doesn't have InfoPath designer installed on it. Does it need to? 

just use the publish wizard and provide the proper path(new path). you will also need to modify the secondary data connections(if used)

That doesn't work with the publishing wizard. When I put in the URL of a different server ( that's not in the same domain as my developement machine) the wizard errors out because it's trying to connect to the URL of the path I put in. Which is what I would expect.  You see what I'm saying?

Then you need to move it to a machine in that domain and publish from there.

Ya...that's what I figured...damn.  Ya know one would think the Microsoft designers / developers of that application and or Bill Gates & company would of thought about that. In so far as, not all production environments { like ours } allow "development tools" to exist in the target domain a product is destined for. Something I hope they consider in future releases.

Take for example building an ASP.NET web application, it's deployment packages and so forth  { I understand it's a completely different animial }  doesn't require the IDE to be in the same domain as the web server it's going to run from.

Well, InfoPath is a Microsoft Office client - it's not a development tool, per se.  If Office is not allowed in a production environment, then you have much bigger issues than deployment, hah.  As for coded application, that's easy - you just package it into a solution and send it to the farm admin who deploys it in Central Admin.  That's much heavier lifting of much more complicated stuff.  InfoPath is just a regular Office client that regular users can utilize to build form templates and view/edit forms based on those templates.  It MUST be allowed in the production environment (doesn't have to be on the SharePoint server, though).

Our production environment(s) do allow for Office Products, that being Word, Excell, Acess and so forth. They ( the admins of the networks ) haven't gotten around and or thought the use of the InfoPath client program was and or is needed. PureEdge Forms is currently implemented and used. I work on Government {DoD} systems / networks that have very strict controls, restrictions etc.  But that's another story. 

As for "packaging it into a solution", are you referring to the the InfoPath template and so forth? Because actually that's what I'd like to do. I've done countless ASP.NET web application deployment / setup packages to deploy web apps to our Production networks. Can I do something similar with InfoPath template forms? And if so, does that negate the need to "publish". Any suggestions on that or places on the net you could point me towards discussing that would be appreciated, Thanks.

Well, whenever you build an InfoPath form in Visual Studio, you have to package it and deploy it, so I imagine you can do it with a regular form, but I don't know the steps.  I still needs to be published so that the template knows its references and so that it can be uploaded to Central Admin - can't upload templates that weren't published as administratively-approved.  That would be the only way to deploy as a solution is if it were published as an admin-deploy type.

As for InfoPath - it's just part of the Office suite.  It doesn't have to be installed separately or anything.  Everyone should already have it by default unless they chose a lower suite that doesn't include it.  With 2003, just about everyone had it, because it was included in the suite most organizations bought.  In 2007, it's part of the Pro Plus, Ultimate, and Enterprise suites - this stuff is usually driven/governed by the Enterprise Agreement.  InfoPath isn't treated as a separate application that must get installed and approve - it's just a built-in part of the Office suite.  Sometimes, it's even part of the suite an organization has, and they don't even realize it, because the IT team didn't check the box for it to get installed when deployed.  That happened at my current gov't client until I told them it was an extremely valuable tool that they had already paid for and should install by default, which they do now.

Well..dang if it still needs to be published, ( hence having InfoPath client on some machine in the production domain), it's not even worth it ( to me at any rate) having to go into Visual Studio, learning all that stuff bla bla bla. I mean it's really simple deploying after it's published.... .{ copy to network, Verify, Upload and Activate }....done.

Okay...just need to get with SA's and install InfoPath client someplace.