Hi,

This may be in the wrong forum, but...

I am designing an application for multiple users within one corporation. The application will run on the server, take data from each user, manipulate that data, and return the results to the user.

I was thinking of making a web application with ASP.Net.

However, I am told that Windows Terminal Services is a good way of making the application available to multiple users.

However, how should I program an application for Windows Terminal Services? What sort of application should it be? Can I use ASP / ASP.Net with VB to make it a "web application"? Or is that unsuitable for Windows Terminal Services?

Please can you explain the difference between the various types of application and server options available to me, so that I create my application in the best way?

I am looking for a really basic guide, as I am very new to these terms, so please feel free to "dumb it down" for me!

Thanks.

James

Terminal Services are ideal for a situation where you need to have a "sandbox system". What I mean is that you have an application that needs to live on a single system (for whatever reason). In most cases this is not necessary. Each user is required to log onto the terminal server and share that machine's resources. You also need to have terminal server licenses for the client connections. You would only want to use terminal services if you have this scenario. Building a web based application that is used by terminal services users defeats the point of building a web based application.

You can most certainly build a web application with ASP/.NET and VB.

If your application is going to be database based (which it sounds like it might be) then you have a couple of better options:

1) Make a client-server application. This could be a windows forms application that runs on the desktop of the client's machine and access the data via standard data connections to the database server.
Pros:
- Rich UI
- Faster response
- Utilization of the local, client processor (important if your application performs calculations or processor intensive operations)

2) Make a web based application.
Pros:
- Based on a single machine
- Easy to update
- Platform independent because it's just running as a web site
- Doesn't place additional requirements on the client's system (you don't have to be running the .NET framework or even windows).
Cons:
- You don't get as rich a user experience because you are limited to working within the realm of HTML. (Granted if you can build the application with a specific browser, such as Internet Explorer, in mind, there are lots of things you can do to make the user interface more interesting.)

Think about your user base:
- What will be the easiest way for your users to access the application?
- What capabilities do they need to have?
- Do they need access restrictions? ASP.NET makes it easy to limit access to parts of a web application.

Think about the application itself:
- Can you expect to need to update the application regularly? Client based applications will be more difficult to update. Web based applications are very simple to update and updates will be affective immediately with no user action required.
- What does the application need to do? If it's just retrieving and saving data, then a web app might be simple and affective. If the client's need to do extensive processing of data or manipulate date, or so some other types of things (edit pictures for example) then a client application may be better suited.

Perhaps the most important factor to consider:
What are you capable of building?
How much time can you spend learning a new technology and/or environment to build this application in?

Peter
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Work smarter, not harder

Peter,

Thank you so much for your clear and helpful reply. Much appreciated.

James