Architecture Advice

[xloop]

Hi

Currently have quite a large system in place, written in ASP, basically manages customers and jobs. System consists of over 200 ASP pages so it's fairly large.

With this design i was able to break it up into modules fairly easy.

My task now is take the application and recreate it in .NET.
I can basically rewrite as much of this as i want.

I'm basically thinking i will create a 3-tier application, with all my classes seperate from the GUI.

Ok getting to the point, the application needs to be an MDI app, but it will consist of many, many forms, is this good design, you can image with 200 asp pages their are loads of different screens, i'm going to have to replicate this somewhat, i'm just wary of having some many forms in one .exe

Is this the only way to do it???

Many Thanks
Rob

 

[alexboly]

From what I understand your problem is that you have too many forms for a single compiled file.
Well, you can always break it into pieces, and compile them separately. .NET gives you some means to do that. You can use dll's, COM components etc. You can also use the .NET reflection mechanism. You will be thus able to control the memory load of the application by loading only those modules that you need at a certain time.
I hope this helps.

 

[chiph]

Is there some way to categorize your forms so that you can reuse the same form for different purposes?

ie.
Forms that present a list of records to the user
Forms that allow the user to edit a record
Forms that present a read-only view of a record
Forms that show a chart or graph.
etc.

Chip H.

 

[GabeC]

Can I ask why you are taking a web based application and making it client server?

I'm not asking because I think it is a bad idea, I am asking because if you have a good reason, I may want to consider it too.
Thanks,

Gabe

 

[hmpbala]

i think your basic question is about enterprise architecture design.

I hope the below link help you:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnea/html/EaArchLand.asp

Bala

 

[xloop]

Gabe

In my situation we run our business off a web-based system, and i must confess it has it's advantages but also has some steep disadvantages.
I find it to be very lacking in functionality without making life very hard for yourself. It's also very unstructured and difficult to debug, i've written a data warehouse application in ASP, and while it works OK, it's not 100% accurate, due to the fact that ASP is so unstructured.

With a windows based application a lot of functionality comes build in, and it's OOP, which is a major plus!

The reason i went with a web-based solution in the first place is because i didn't think VB was up to the job, i hated using MTS and all the DLL Hell shananagans.


Thanks to everyone for replying.

 

[alexboly]

I think that you have advantages in .NET over these issues: you can use OOP also for Web applications; windows forms are quite similar in programming with their web equivalents - web forms-, and you can implement the data I/O module and the middle tier and then use them in the two versions of the application.
You can also split the application in modules, and it's much easier to work with .NET assemblies than it was to work with dll's.
Now if you want the two versions of the application to communicate with one another, you can implement this also, though it is more difficult.
Ok, hope this helps.

 

[xloop]

I've done the 70-316 (Visual C#) exam, sql server 70-229, 70-306 and i'm looking forward to doing the architecture exam so i finally start putting the technical knowledge to proper use!



CHeers

 

[alexboly]

Well, xloop, I haven't done any exams, but I'm preparing for them.
Do you have any useful resources for the Visual C# and the architecture exam?
Thanks.

 

[xloop]

For the 70-316 exam i bought the microsoft press book, read it twice, read everything i could relevent to the exam in the VS Documentation and then took it and passed it.

I got a couple of questions with VB.NET syntax so make sure you know a bit of that.

Make sure you know ADO.NET (50%)
Security (10%)
XML (10%)
Syntax(5%)

Try to learn more than whats featured in the exam this will give you the chance to take an educated guess even if you don't know it.

Good luck!

PS. I found the SQL Server one 20 times more difficult!! nightmare!