question about transferring data with vb.net

[netooi25]

Hello, I am developing an application in VB.net and I need to transfer some data from a client program over the internet. I have been exploring various ways to do this, but i'm not sure what would be the best way to approach this. The people I am developing it for suggested having the program use email to send the data, but as I have looked into the problem a little more, I have found that the amount of data a client may need to send has the potential to be way too large for sending in an email.

If anyone has done anything like this before, could you suggest some other options for me? Difficult or easy it doesnt matter (of course easier is more preferable ).

Some things i'm looking at:
I need the user to be authenticated in some way when they send data, perhaps using a password or some type of login for the user submitting the data, so a random person cant just start submitting junk data.

Also I need to be able to send a large amount of data, perhaps up to 100MB or more.

The data will consist of an information file, and then a number of different files. The information file consists of information that explains what to do with the rest of the files. I plan to zip all this together to send as one file.


Possibilities: ?
Is it possible to use something like ftp in vb.net?
I've also considered writing and having a server program running to receive the information, but as this program has the potential of being used by a business with lots of customers in the future, I also want to guard against something that may go down or be a bottleneck. Receiving the data needs to be a stable thing. Even if its just something like having an ftp directory the business can go in and print off the information from. The main question is just getting the information over the internet for them to use.

The information the user sends is going to be something that is just received and printed out for now at the business, but in the future may end up being entered into a small database. Would it be easier or better to try to remotely connect to a database to send the information to?

I realize this is a very broad question, I was just wondering if anyone has approached anything like this before and may have some helpful suggestions or input.

Thanks very much,
Netooi

 

[jshurst]

I haven't done anything like that before but I think a Web Service may be a good solution. I can't tell from your post if you are trying to push or pull the data from the source over the internet. If you are trying to pull it then a web service might be the way to go. This would transmit the data in XML which is also useful for getting through firewalls. I just took a class on this and haven't built one myself so I don't know how much help I can be, but I thought I would write since no one else has yet. Hope it helps.

 

[netooi25]

If this helps with the description any, a customer will download this program from the company's website and run it on their own local computer.. There will be potentially lots of customers.

They will use the program to select certain files and mark different options about those files..
The list of file names and options marked about each file will generate the "information file".
Then after they finish with this, they will hopefully just be able to click a button that will zip up the information file along with the files they , send off this information, kinda like an order, to the company.

I'm looking for a good way to send the information to the company. I'm not very familiar with .net yet, i've used Visual Basic before a good bit tho, so i can get around ok with vb.net, but i'm still learning. Perhaps a web service is the way to go, but i dont know much about web services or where to start.

 

[dace]

If you're able to deploy client apps, it sounds like a .NET web service might be a good solution here.

You could start with reading up on them a bit:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/understanding/

And there's lots of links/tutorials online as well:

http://www.15seconds.com/Issue/010530.htm

http://www.freevbcode.com/ShowCode.asp?ID=4204

http://abstractvb.com/code.asp?A=1006

http://searchwebservices.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid26_gci815684,00.html

etc. etc.