I haven't put up a web site/app yet, so please excuse my ignorance.
Eloquera looks like a great object database, but the embedded (in-process) mode is not meant to be used for a web app. I have to therefore somehow run the server exe on the server to use it.
When I use the server on my comp it first needs to be allowed through the firewall, as one would expect.
I am wondering if I could somehow run the server.exe in the same process as the web app and still have it be a tcp/ip server accepting multiple connections.
Or perhaps there are normal ways of dealing with this situation on typical "retail" web hosts?
In Short: I believe I am trying to embedd a tcp "server.exe" into an asp.net web application
Seems like the usual thing to do in this situation would be to get a dedicated server, or, more realistically in my case, a VPS (I did say I was learning!).This really pushes up the costs and hassle. No shared hosting that I can see offers Eloquera DB.
So, it seems that my only option would be a low-end VPS.
It's disappointing that I can't use embedded (desktop mode) eloquera in an asp.net web app, but I understand that this is to do with the nature of web apps.
Related
I am new to server side programming, so please excuse me if my question seems obvious or ridiculous.
I am testing different back end options, like a language of a server (PHP, ASP.NET, Node.js, Python, Ruby and Go) and web servers (Apache, nginx, IIS...).
I am doing this to find the optimal language and web server for a monitoring web app. The server should grab data from a DB (updated independently by another app) upon a client's request, and return it back to the client (just as a background, it has nothing to do with the question).
My question now is as described in the title, can I use any web server with any application server's language?
For example, to use nginx with let's say ASP.NET (I know very well ASP.NET goes with IIS, I am just trying to give an extreme example)?
If the languages are not compatible with any web server, then, please explain to me with which each of the following languages is compatible with which web servers (the most recommended ones) and why:
PHP
ASP.NET
Node.js
Python
Ruby
Go
Again, sorry if it is about cars and I am asking about bikes. And Thanks for any help, I really appreciate it.
First of all, it's best to consider the framework and the programming language as completely different concepts, even if they often go hand in hand. E.g. Python is a programming language whilst ASP.NET is a framework. You can program ASP.NET framework applications for example in C#, VB, or even in Python. And if you were to choose a programming language, say Python, you can use Django, web2py and TurboGears for Python based web applications.
For web servers, it depends what kind of integration with the programming language you wish. More integration isn't necessarily better. Apache can run a PHP module, which is tightly integrated. Nginx can run PHP web apps using fastcgi, which allows you to run the PHP code as an external process. Even though Nginx using fastcgi isn't as tightly coupled as in Apache, it's not necessarily slower or worse! In many cases, the main web server (e.g. Nginx) is only a proxy for the actual web server, where the Nginx proxy handles latest web protocols such as HTTP2, SSL and compression support. This way the application's main web server can be reasonably simple. This is how ASP.NET core Kestrel web servers work: it's a very simple barebone web server with little to no support for latest and more advanced web protocols. Instead, Kestrel relies on the proxy to offer these services.
So, to answer your question, you can use practically any general purpose web server as your main web server for any programming language/framework assuming the web server is either 1) a proxy to an external web service, 2) the language support is built in or as bundled modules (e.g. Apache+PHP) or 3) supports using interfaces such as cgi/fastcgi (e.g. Nginx+PHP or Apache+Pyhthon). IIS for example can run .NET 4.x apps natively, .NET core using proxy and PHP using fastcgi.
However, entirely different question is whether it's a good idea to combine any language with any web server. Some combinations are badly supported or might have slower performance.
My recommendation is to look at the question from the other end: Choose your language first, then choose from the frameworks available to that language, and then, depending on support, the suitable web server. If you want flexibility, use a proxy. Using e.g. Nginx as a front facing proxy, you can have multiple web servers running using different programming languages on the same computer. With the proxy, all these will play nicely and you can have multiple websites originating from the same IP address.
I'm brand new to C#/.NET
Why does ASP.NET have so many different choices of projcets? (Web Application, Web API, Web Site, MVC ect). I just want to listen on a tcp port, and a way to send a response. If there are libraries to help me do routine stuff like constructing the HTTP request, parsing the header, ect - then cool. But I don't want a super opinionated framework that tries to do everything under the sun.
Why do I need IIS at all?
Addressing your points in reverse order, first - why do I need IIS?
The answer is, maybe you don't. If you are doing a simple listener that won't be exposed to the public internet, then you don't need it.
If you are doing a web application that needs to scale, be robust and easy to manage then it can help you with:
Logging
Operating in a multi-server environment for scale/high availability
Handling multiple requests in an isolated way
Serving multiple applications from the same host with sandboxing to ensure each application has guaranteed resources (memory, CPU)
Application lifecycle management
IP address restrictions
support for FTP, CGI, WebDAV
URL rewriting
Response header manipulation
Failed request tracing
Protection against some DoS exploits like slow HTTP attacks
Etc.
In short, it is an industrial strength, real world web server that will keep your application up reliably in a hostile world and scale as your application grows. it is certainly overkill for some cases if you don't need this kind of scale/high availability/management capability. In those cases you have the option to self host ASP.Net in a Windows Service or even a console app. This might sound complicated, but it has been made pretty simple by OWIN - Open Web Interface for .Net. This is an abstraction of the interface used by Asp.Net to communicate with its hosting server.
There is a very good tutorial on how to self host web API in a console app here
http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/hosting-aspnet-web-api/use-owin-to-self-host-web-api
It does exactly what you ask for in your comment:
You create a console app project
You add references to the right assemblies (the tutorial uses NuGet to download the assembly packages)
You code up your web operation logic
You compile
You run the resulting exe
That's it!
On your second point about ASP.Net - it is a framework that has gone through a lot of evolution trying to keep up with very rapid changes in the web development world. This meant it got a bit bloated and lost some of its coherence, but recently the developers have been focussed on making it more lightweight, more modular and simpler. Scott Guthrie summarises it in his blog:
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/introducing-asp-net-5
Why does ASP.NET have so many different choices of projcets? (Web Application, Web API, Web Site, MVC ect). I just want to listen on a tcp port, and a way to send a response. etc...
Because each project has its own purpose.
If you want to just listen on a TCP port then you could go learn Microsoft's Katana OWIN (but I highly doubt if this is what you want).
Katana OWIN
Briefly going through each projects purpose:
"Web Application" actually opens up another window and lets you choose from the following:
Web API is for exposing RESTful services or JSON data.
Web Forms is for making web pages that use Web Form components.
(A bit like Windows Forms, but Web)
MVC is for making Model-View-Controller web applications. This is where you build components with a separation of concerns. Model for data. View for what the user sees. Controller for controlling how your page behaves.
Why do I need IIS at all?
IIS is for serving .NET applications.
Without it, it would be quite hard to serve .NET applications.
I'll start with 2 then move on to your first question. IIS will run whatever the .NET web service you need, be it a monstrous WCF service, an ASP.NET application or the most basic http handler.
To my knowledge, ISS is the most straightforward way to use .NET web services. If you are used to PHP, it's basically LAMP or WAMP for .NET, which means it is sort of necessary. There are alternatives, as Mike Goodwin points out, but I have to admit I am not familiar with those third parties. Since replacing a layer for another doesnt mean much, I would stick to the "normal" procedure.
Since you dont want the framework to do a truckload of operations for you, your best bet might be along those lines:
Create a basic ASP.NET projet
Remove the default ASP.Net page because it seems you dont want it
Add a Generic Handler to your project. This will result in a myFile.ashx, which handles http requests and let you build any response you want
Of course, if you dont want to bother with IIS configurations, you'll need someone to setup an URL on IIS and map it against your handler repository.
EDIT:
"Abstraction layers" would be the very definition of frameworks, for good or ill, so you're stucked with it.
Now, since you have a low level background a not-so-intrusive way to work with the .NET web services would probably be the three steps I suggested earlier. You are still stucked with IIS though, in order handles the communications (i.e. manages sockets/requests). That's the way the framework works.
STILL, THERE IS HOPE. If you have complete control over your server (which is not my case, some other IT team manages the web servers), you certainly could build a windows service that listens to some socket and work the requests accordingly. It is a most unusal solution if you want to serve web pages, but would work rather well if you only want to push some data through http requests. If you go down this path, I suggest you take a look at the System.Net namespaces, you'll find some classes like "Socket" there. Combined with a console application or a windows service, you could work something out.
One of my coworkers is former microcontroller designer, I know exactly what kind of feeling you have towards the .NET framework. You'll go through some frustrations at times, but most of the time there are work arrounds. Feel free to request more details if you need some.
I need advise on the architecture of my new application. In the environment I work in, we normally create Win based apps and these compose a UI layer, Business Layer, WCF Service Layer, and Data Access Layer. These are on a 3 tier architecture with Services Server, Database Server and clients machines accessing the application via Citrix on an Application Server. I just created a web aplpication and my admin has suggested this should be hosted on a separate web server, my question is, is there a need for my web application to use a WCF Service Layer, since it can be hosted on the same application server? Basically, do websites need to use wcf/service layers and what are the benefits?
1.
Read this:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/10746/Dude-where-s-my-business-logic
My advice:
At the least, you should use WCF, and use "named pipes". You can deploy both the Host (WCF) and the Client (Asp.Net website) on the same machine.
The Asp.Net website will be the "client" and access the service.
Then, if you ever want to horizontally scale, all you have to do is change the .config settings to use a different protocol besides named-pipes.
Aka, you'll have the "logical separation", even if you deploy both on the same physical machine(s).
They (websites, any project) don't "need" to do anything.
You can write inline sql code behind buttons on webforms if you want.
But its not maintainable. And its not scalable. And it is probably foolish.
But putting in the time to SOA a mid to large sized application is worth the effort in the beginning, IMHO.
This is a question without a concrete possible answer, do you need a wcf? well that depends on the requirements and the architecture you want to put in place.
based on the small context you provide maybe you can get some the following benefits
WCF Provide state for operations
Fast processing (binary serialization)
WCF are more likely 'to be testable' than legacy asmx web services
You can access the same backend you built for your desktop applications
regarding if than can be accessed from the same server, the short answer is yes (obviously you need to measure your server capabilities)
I've done some app's that doesn't use a wcf at all, and other that use it for certain operations you can take a look to this SO answer to get a good example where a wcf could be a good candidate in an app.
Is there a way to make a desktop application easily interfaceable via Web ? Meaning, can you have a way to interface with a single desktop application as if you were remote desktop'd into the machine but not? I am looking at doing this in ASP.NET or Silverlight.
I'm not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for...
If you were able to create your entire application UI in Silverlight and host it properly (in IIS or whatever) it would then be accessible from anywhere on the web. If you needed the perception of a real desktop app when running locally, you could then just make some simple app (WinForms, WPF, whatever) which contains a web browser control that could also load up the hosted Silverlight app (and just be a transparent browser). Depending on what the application is doing, you would obviously need some sort of service layer (probably in WCF) do to all of the heavy lifting and data access.
I guess the main question would be: can you accomplish everything your application needs to do in Silverlight? Since Silverlight is meant to run in a browser, it can be very limiting.
There are many solutions based on plugins. Some of the popular ones:
Citrix
Spoon
If you're ok with plugins, but only if they're common ones (flash, java), there are various solutions:
http://www.wizhelp.com/flashlight-vnc/
http://www.tightvnc.com/doc/java/README.txt (bundled java applet with TightVNC)
If you don't want plugins at all, there's an experimental HTML5/javascript VNC viewer:
http://guacamole.sourceforge.net/
I'm trying to start on a new project to help enrich my asp.net knowledge, since I'm not completely satisfied with what my class is teaching me. From my (very little) experience with Rails, I recall every application containing its own development web server. Say I were trying to create a local-only application, but I want it to run in a web browser (Therefore ASP.Net). Are there any options in terms of being able to distribute an application and have it launch its own, or just not require IIS/VS/Apache-mono?
You may want to look into aspNETserve. It sounds like it would fit your needs. I haven't worked on it recently, so it probably has some rough edges.
On the plus side its all open source, and if you are just getting started with ASP.NET it would be a real eye opener on how the internals of the ASP.NET lifecycle operate.
The simple answer is that you need a web server to run the application. It cannot run without one.
If we're talking demo purposes or you don't require that many features of a web server there are redistributable web-servers that you can include with your setup package.
Like Alex mentioned the most popular one seems to be Cassini.
I'm assuming that you want to run the site on the same machine you are developing it on.
Visual Studio 2005 and up allows you to run the site from VS itself if you want to view it locally on your development machine.
To my understanding Visual Web Developer allows you to do the same as well.
Visual Web Developer
You can use the cassini web server. Please note that those are different redistributable:
http://www.asp.net/Downloads/archived/cassini/
http://ultidev.com/products/Cassini/
I'm not really certain why you would want to develop a web application (with all the difficulties it entails, due to the fact that you are dealing with a stateless connection to an unknown client machine), but then run the entire thing on the client machine.
Surely it makes more sense to develop a WinForms application?
Follow this guide to setup IIS on your PC to run ASP.NET apps:
http://www.geekpedia.com/tutorial25_Setting-up-your-ASPNET-server-IIS.html