Winform or Webform 1

[LonnieJohnson]

When is it appropriate, good or feasible to create a windows desktop application vs creating a web based application?

Thanks in advance for all wisdom pointed my way.

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[RiverGuy]

For in-house development, I think it's more up to the company and the development guidelines. Some companies have standardized on web apps. But with click-once deployment and publishing of Windows apps so easy now, you can manage your versioning of Windows apps as well as web apps.

I don't do a lot of application development anymore in my current job (I do mostly database development now). But when the need arises, I develop Windows apps because I'm more familiar with them and because I can provide rich GUI functionality with ease. But really, there's probably one thousand pros and cons on each side. Off the top of my head:

Web Apps
--------
Pro -- by default, graceful crashes
Pro -- nothing to install (usually)
Pro -- easy to pre-load with application values (QueryString)
Pro -- more modular (think of adding pages to a site or portal instead of a self-contained .exe)
Con -- you need a web server
Con -- harder to provide rich client GUI functionality
Con -- sometimes web apps are less responsive (postbacks)
Con -- some functionality could be dependent upon the user's browser settings.
Con -- design considerations for different browsers.

Windows Apps
--------
Pro -- Easier to provide rich client GUI functionality
Pro -- More responsive
Pro -- Offload some processing to the client PC
Pro -- Rich custom controls
Con -- You may have to pay more attention to system requirements
Con -- Harder to integrate with other apps
Con -- Generally more debugging/potential for crashing (debatable)

 

[LonnieJohnson]

Thanks RiverGuy. Those are some very good pros and cons for each. It helps.

Most of our Visual Studio apps are web based. We have a lot of stuff we have been converting from MS Access. However, some of the smaller Access apps I was wondering if it were better to convert to winforms for ease of development and for rapid development.

Are there any security concerns or advantages with either? Someone said that accounting apps should be winforms but gave no real justification other than they believed winforms to be more secure.

Thanks again for the quick response.

ProDev, Builders of Affordable Software Applications
Visit me at ==>

http://www.prodev.us

May God bless you beyond your imagination!!!

 

[RiverGuy]

I'm not sure I agree with the security aspect that you said someone brought up. But here is how I see it: When you develop a WinForms app, you are more likely to prompt the user to provide credentials to the database or use Windows Authentication -- you don't want to have a password compiled into your .exe only able to be decompiled by a savvy user. However, with Web Apps, the user does not get the .Net code you have developed downloaded to their desktop. So it's easier to be lazy with web apps -- one can hard code in a database password for the web app. But you still want to take security precautions so that a high powered account is not used in order to deter SQL injection.

 

[LonnieJohnson]

Thanks again.

If I remember correctly, the security disadvantage for the webform had something to do with it being exposed to the internet. I honestly can't remember and could not find anything to justify it online.

ProDev, Builders of Affordable Software Applications
Visit me at ==>

http://www.prodev.us

May God bless you beyond your imagination!!!

 

[RiverGuy]

That depends again. Most web forms I have developed have never been exposed to the internet. They were internal on the intranet. The type of development you are doing can dictate a lot. For example, ASP.Net is heavily used in public web sites. But I would estimate that C++ is used more than VB.Net or C# for developing shrinkwrapped software.

 

[PRPhx]

Web forms can be as open or secure as windows forms. It all depends on how you write your application.

I worked with a web based application that was open, both to the company intranet, along with a few outside vendors. Security was in the form of a login web page, storing user names and passwords in a MS SQL database. The application also allowed me to set resources for each group/user. And we saved all kinds of sensitive info (credit card numbers, SSN's, etc). Never really worried about someone gaining access to things they shouldn't have.