Newbie: What is the best way?

[conceptmgt]

Hi

I am new to visual basic .net, I have been using asp for years and have decided to take the plunge. I have decided the best way to learn is to work on a project.

The program I am going to create will require a user to link up to my website (which will be asp.net based) to receive updates. What is the best way to do this? Is there a way to synchronise databases or should I use something like XML, or is there another method I do not know about?

Thanks for your time,

Gary

 

[jcisco]

i'm not 100% sure what you are trying to do.. but you could use a web service and push a dataset down to the client (which is xml/xsl).

cheers.

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[Interwizard]

I have a have a similar design requirement. It seems alot of people in the white-lab, perfect world, "microsoftish" scenarios, let their vb.net clients connect to data, directly ot through a webservice and then persist the dataset to file for offline content.

In my situation, this simply isn't feasible. Downloading all records, everytime they connect is just too much payload for many applications, in my experience. I was looking at 8 mbs of XML data for the data needed for my app. My seldom connected users are salesman connecting from hotels and often from dial up.

I wondered if their was a way to compress the XML, but in my solution, I ended up having to implement a client database and a fairly hokey database replication algorithm from the client and a .net webservice.. It's a work in progress so I don't exactly have code to show you.

If you hear of a better way, I'd love to hear it!!

 

[stnkyminky]

Couldn't you just download the file? Sorta like with an antivirus dat file. When a new version is available have them download it.

Scott
Programmer Analyst
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[chiph]

I wondered if their was a way to compress the XML

Interwizard -
XML data will compress an incredible amount. I recently had a 4.1mB XML file that zipped down to 275kB. So if you want to minimize connect time (I assume your salespeople are on a long-distance dial-up connection), this would be one way to do it.

I've heard good things about Xceed's compression library (

http://www.xceedsoft.com/products/ZipNet/),

as it will work with in-memory stream objects as well as files.

Chip H.

 

[Interwizard]

Great tip! Thanks for the info. I've been real reluctant to drop my dataset to file and then zip it. It just didn't &quot;feel&quot; like a clean solution. Compression of the stream objects, now that's the ticket. I'll have to check that out.