Question

I have a working WinForms application, written in c#, which is divided in several layers (Data layer, Model, business logic, common layer, etc). I would like to allow users to use web browser also for data manipuolation. Do I need to make some kind of in-between layer, or I am safe with using business layer from Web forms? Also, what kind of MS technology should be used on the web layer, as I see that we can use both classic ASP.NET pages, Silverlight, or maybe something else? The application itself has several forms for entering data, and many, many different forms with charts and reports.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

It’s hard to make a recommendation without knowing your existing app details. There’s also no one right answer. Silverlight, ASP.net (MVC), Javascript/jquery/ajax are all good technologies that have their place and use. But, as you decide for yourself, here’s some thoughts and things to consider.

• A thick winform app is typically a fat client with local state. Your data model etc… may rely on state to be persisted across many requests in a fatter local process.
• A thick winform app is typically used by the one user & process – unless you’re coding concurrency, your app may not be thread safe.
• A web process is shared by multiple users making requests – any shared state will need to consider concurrency and memory footprint.
• You typically want the web process to hold less state and drive more of the client experience down to the client – thus the popularity in ajax, jquery etc… More javascript technologies.
• Silverlight is closer to your winform process – it’s hosted in the browser plug-in with the state and code being accessed by that one user. You will have to change the view layers to silverlight but you might be able to retain your model and data layers.
• Running in a silverlight plug-in does have more restrictions (sandboxed) than a full winform app. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd470128%28v=vs.95%29.aspx
• Many folks like ASP.Net MVC – check it out.
• Javascript approaches using ajax, jquery, etc… has gotten alot of momentum in recent years. Be aware that will be a bigger shift from your winform code which may be good or bad depending on how you look at it.