Would I be right in saying that I can develop a .NET application which can be deployed both as an Intranet site and as a standalone application?

Where I work, we have two sets of applications; one is an ASP Intranet system and the other is written in Access (yuk!) and I would like to (a) combine the databases into one and (b) combine as much of the code into one suite as possible.

Regards,

Sean Anderson

__________________
Regards,

Sean Anderson

Yes - you can develop a .NET app which can be deployed as both an Intranet site and as a standalone application.

Properly done, a good design will encapsulate all of the business logic in .net library components (dlls) which can be used from any presentation mechanism you can invent - including an intranet web site or a windows forms "stand-alone" application. Of course, you more or less will have to develop 2 different presentation projects - one for each.

Overall, this isn't hard once you have the skills and knowledge to accomplish this. However, I have seen numerous bad attempts and failures in trying to do this. In other words, there might be a serious learning curve.


Woody Z
http://www.learntoprogramnow.com

I am reading through some stuff on the MS website, which doesn't seem to cover the basics of this. I presume that this would be written in Visual Studio .NET and that there's an option somewhere that determines what the compiled project is (Website|Application).

This will see the collation of about 12 applications (in Access) each of which contains upto 75 forms with the existing web solution which has around 80 pages. The whole system can be linked to either Access or SQL databases, of which there is (presently) one DB per application.

The net result of my aims is that the final application will be fundamentally the same for both types.

The vision that I have is that the final (singular) database will be a lot more structured and "neat" with extended use of stored procedures to get the data available in a 'ready to use' format. From the application side of things; just one project to manage and develop with code that is saved on a server (under source safe). The application is then compiled to web or application to suit my clients needs.

Have to note at this point that my client base is VERY fussy about IT security and we often face the situations where we cannot use registry or DLL in any way ... such is the tightness of security that Access was chosen as there is no requirement for an install set ... just copy the MDE from a USB memory stick.

May sound like a task and a half (which it is, I know), but I am reasonably well versed with VB, ASP, SQL and am quite creative, which I hope will ease the learning curve.

Regards,

Sean Anderson

Being able to copy an Access database to a memory stick seems like a serious security concern. Either application can use the same database. Web applications can be secured and its easy to control who can view the site and who cannot. And you can't just copy the app or database to a memory stick.

A certificate of authority can be installed on the web app for heightened security so that usernames and passwords will be encrypted. I'm partial to the web app since everyone will always be using the same version and updates don't have to be distributed.

Sorry, my previous message was aimed more at fishing for how I could start a project that can be easily compiled as a EXE as well as a web application so that I can collate a lot of our duplicated code into one place.

Regards,

Sean Anderson