I am coming from a background in Web Development. Have had some classes in MS access about 3 years ago. Currently I am working on a project primarily built using Access. Eventually the program will be expanded to interface with the same database that Access uses in the cloud. Which will then lead to development on a web project.
My question is its 2017 and I am aware that you can make web calls in Access , but just because I can doesn't mean I should right ? My client/boss would like to implement a credit card processing payment system into his Access application. However I am pushing for this to be something built from the web development side project that will take place later using an API. Any Access developers out there able to suggest whether its a good idea to wait to build this feature later when development has begun on the web project ? Is it okay or secure to make web calls using Access ? Or is there any alternatives to an existing merchant service that can interface with Access ? Any advice on this topic would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Access (VBA) has COM support, and makes heavy use of it. Any existing merchanting solution that works with COM can work with Access.
If your desired merchant solution doesn't, you can create COM classes and libraries in C#, C++, VB.Net and probably some more programming languages.
If it's a good idea? That heavily depends on your demands. I don't know what the advantage of an Access database over a program is for you.
Note that if you're using ASP.Net for your web solution, you might use a common class to check and authorize payments, and you might want to develop both simultaneously.
I have a asp.net Web App thru which i want to access Outlook 2013 and add/edit/delete outlook tasks.
I also have Exchange Server 2010.
I just do not know how to proceed with the solution. Do i need to use JavaScript API for Office OR EWS OR what...
Pls suggest...
For starters you can't access Outlook directly from a server/web application:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/257757
You also cannot use the JavaScript API for Office as there is currently no support for task items.
Your only option is to use Exchange Web Services. Here's a good starting point:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/EN-US/library/office/jj900166(v=exchg.150).aspx
I have not tried to do this, so this is very general advice.
I would suggest reading up on EWS first, and then looking at the Javascript API for Office after that, if there are compelling reasons why EWS won't work in your scenario.
After that, the next question you need to answer is whether you want the server to do the communication with Exchange, or the client.
The server (the "code behind") might be a better choice if you need to incorporate data from other sources than user input (such as a database) into the user tasks, or vice versa.
If you are going to do this all via javascript on the client, then the Javascript API might also be an option, assuming the functionality is there.
Hope this helps.
I have been told that Microsoft OCS is a bit like Windows Messenger.
Can it be added to a web page by inserting and configuring some standard code so we end up with something like this:
I know there is an OCS API but I don’t want to spend days piecing an OCS app together from this.
I was hoping there would be a component that allows me to stick the whole app on a web page and configure it to operate correctly. I presume this is something that would take less than 2 days if it is possible. Can someone advise if this is about right for an experienced developer?
I understand the web page would need to be in an Intranet with Active Directory.
Sort of a yes and no answer, this... There is no simple way to embed the entire client in a web page, but you can embed the important stuff - a list of contacts with their presence, and the Click-to-Call functionality. This approach relies on the end users having Communicator, Office and IE installed.
See my answer about NameCtrl here. There's a bit of javascript and state tracking involved if you're displaying more than one contact, so 2 days feels about right.
It's worth bearing in mind that this will work if the web page itself determines which list of contacts to show. If the contact list instead needs to be pulled from the user's Communicator, this isn't supported for web pages (some parts of the Communicator API are marked as NotScriptable for security reasons). You'll need to use the Office Communicator Automation API, and create a .net COM Interop wrapper around it. I've detailed a workaround to that here (this example discusses Silverlight, but it should be the same for javascript). I'd give this another couple of days on top of the original 2.
It's also worth bearing in mind that this approach will work with OCS, and will continue to work if the customer upgrades to Lync Server 2010. If they are already on Lync Server 2010, then the simpler approach is to use the Silverlight controls. Probably only a day for this approach.
We have a large code base in MFC and VB. A few applications are in .NET. All these applications interoperate with each other on the user's machine and also connect with Unix servers via sockets.
Recently we have started discussing a re-write of our applications and possibility of moving a lot of these desktop applications to web (they would run in intranet). A straight forward way is rewritting them in one of the .NET technologies. But a suggestion about using Google Web tookit has popped up and the argument is that it would help creating applications that would run in a browser on both desktop and mobile devices.
One of the key problem that I see is that GWT is a large abstraction over Javascript. This will require the team to learn GWT, Javascript, IDEs etc as their experience has been primarily Microsoft technologies and not Java. It would be easier for them to learn .NET technologies instead of GWT.
I do not have a depth of GWT and its drawback pittfalls and do not know about a parallel Microsoft Technology that I should investigate.
So I would appreciate if people here can share their views or experiences using GWT or equivalent Microsoft technology.
Questions like this are subjective, so you wont get one straight answer. Are you rewriting the unix/socket backend as well? Or do you intend to put a web service wrapper in front of the sockets because without this I cant see a web / internet solution working.
For my money if you are a .net/microsoft house then a MS technology is the way to go. MS is currently backing jQuery which is a client side javascript framework, but there are others like extjs. If you stick with MS and a server side solution then ASP.NET MVC is currently gaining a lot of traction. MVC and jQuery work well together imho.
If you set up a REST based web service layer for your backend it means you can even get away with flat html front ends powered by any javascript framework without needed a server side web rendering technology at all. For REST you can look at .NET WCF if you stick with MS tech.
Given that you've been working with MFC and VB, .NET is going to be a new world to you as well. At least with Microsoft you'll have strong development tools and learning resources that you'll need. Not so sure that will be the case with GWT.
But also, if one of your developers wins the lottery and leaves the company, you'll have fewer problems finding another MS developer to replace him.
Given you guys are a Microsoft development shop, I'd stick with the Microsoft stack (unless your developers really want to learn something new - in my experience that's rarely the case).
Anyway, I thought I'd bring up that Microsoft had an "embraced and extended" version of GWT called Volta that they release 2-3 years ago. The idea is that it takes C# as its source file, and compiles that to Javascript.
I suspect the project is dead (I can't seem to find a whole lot of information about it), but you may want to verify that. I brought it up because you guys seemed like a Microsoft shop who's interested in GWT.
Based on your provided information I think it is better to use fromMicrosoft Technologies instead of Google Technologies.
This will reduce Cost (include Time to learn and also the budget and etc)
on the other hand, Silverlight goes on the windows phone mobiles with (WinMo7) so your application will run as the same in Cellphones too. So my sugesstion is to use Microsofts Technologies.
We need to build an administration portal website to support our client/server application. Since we're a .Net shop the obvious traditional way would be to do that in ASP.Net. But Silverlight 2 will be coming out of beta a good while before our release date. Should we consider building the whole website in silverlight instead, with a supporting WCF backend?
The main function of the portal will be: users, groups and permissions configuration; user profile settings configuration; file upload and download for files needed to support the application.
I think the main reason for taking this approach would be that we have good experience with WPF and WCF, but little experience in ASP.Net. Either way we would have to learn ASP.Net or Silverlight, and learning Silverlight seems a more natural extension of our current skills.
Are there any big no-nos from the experience of StackOverflowers? What are the big positives?
I would recommend against building a pure Silverlight site.
Silverlight suffers from the same issues as Flash does: Unintuitive Bookmarking, issues with printing, accessibility issues, not working back buttons and so on.
Also, you would require your users to have Silverlight installed or at least to have the ability to install it.
In controlled environements (eg. in large companies or health care) or on mobile devices, this might not be the case.
I would definitely go for a full Silverlight application, specially if you have good experience from WPF. You will be able to reuse your knowledge from WPF, and should be able to pick up Silverlight fairly quickly. I've been working with Silverlight since Beta 1, and the current Beta 2 is of solid quality. I guess it's safe to assume that a RTW version is just around the corner.
Pilf has some valid point, specially around printing. For that I would probably use SQL Reporting Services, or some other reporting framework, on the server side, and then pop up a new window with printable reports. For linking and bookmarking the issues are no different than any other AJAX application. I did a blog post today about how to provide deep linking and back-forward navigation in Silverlight.
Silverlight also has all the hooks needed for great accessibility support, as the UI Automation API from WPF is brought into Silverlight. I don't know if the screen reader vendors have caught up yet. The styling/template support in Silverlight makes it easy to provide high-contrast skins for visual impaired users if that is a concern.
Depends on your goals. If administration portal is part of application and will only be used from computers where your application is installed, there are plenty of advantages of going fully Silverlight - or even WPF.
But if you can see a scenario where it will be used either from random PC or by random person, fully functional HTML/Javascript version is absolutely necessary.
Some reasons are:
Most people don't have silverlight and you'll earn a good load of swearing if they have to download and install it. Some people who have it installed keep it disabled (together with flash and sometimes even images) to avoid distractions and speed up browsing.
When HTML site fails, user gets error page and reloads. When silverlight fails, it can hang or crash.
HTML is what is expected - both by users and web browsers: back and refresh buttons work as they should, hyperlinks and forms work as expected.
Slow internet is still very common, both in remote areas and mobile devices.
I agree with what everyone had said so far and I think this Flow Chart, which is aimed at Flash, also applies to Silverlight.
Source of Image
It sounds like your problem is that you need a rich-client admin application. Why not use click-once?
On the topic of remote andministrators, another poster stated that was an argument in favor of HTML if the admins were on a slow connection. I would argue that depending on the type of information, it may be more efficient to use Silverlight. If you have an ASP.NET datagrid populated with server side data binding, you can be downloading a ton of markup and viewstate data. Even if you're using an alrternative to DataGrid that's lighter on the ViewState, you will still have a lot of HTML to download.
In Silverlight, once you get the XAP down, which is probably going to be smaller than the corresponding HTML, the XAP is cached and so you shouldn't have that cost every time, and you'll just be retrieving the data itself.
For another example, let's say you have a bunch of dropdown lists on one of your forms which all have the same values in the list. In Silverlight, you can get these values once and bind them to all of the dorpdowns, in HTML you will have to repeat them each time.
This will get better with client side data binding in ASP.NET, which follows a very similar model to Silverlight and WPF for data binding.
Overall, I would also think that you would need to write less code for the Silverlight implementation which can increase productivity and reduce maintenace costs.
ASP all the way. You should only use silverlight/flash etc when text can't do what you want it to do - e.g. display video.
Using a plugin for your website makes it slow, and requires the user to have the plugin installed. Silverlight for instance rules out all Linux user. Also, since Silverlight is pretty new, there is no telling how committed Microsoft will be to keep the platform alive if it doesn't pick up soon.
I'd stick to plain old HTML with server side scripting.
Also, for public websites: Flash and Silverlight can't be indexed by any search engine, so good luck with writing tons of metadata if you want any visitors at all.
Silverlight is a good choice for an internal-facing portal, just as it would be for a public-facing portal if you've already evaluated your project and have decided to go forward with a web portal. You are free to integrate Silverlight components within an existing ASP.NET application (i.e. the "islands of richness") approach, but if you have the ability to build a new project from scratch, don't discount a completely Silverlight solution as a valid choice where you would have went with a traditional ASP.NET portal. Silverlight is RTW now, so if this decision is still on the table, you know you won't have to deal with breaking changes going forward.
There are some downsides with developing a site completely in Flash / Silverlight, but if those downsides won't matter to you or won't have an impact then there is nothing stopping you. Choose whatever tool you think meets your needs more fully. I wouldn't be put off creating a site purely in Silverlight based on the downsides, because it brings a lot more positives to the user experience.
The previous comments have dealt with most of the downsides of using Silverlight for a site like this and I agree. If you're determined to have rich-client style development and your audience is small (for admins only) then I'd probably recommend WPF over Silverlight as it currently provides a richer set of tools and controls.
If you stick with ASP.NET have you looked at Dynamic Data - it's ideal for building backend management sites with little effort.
I've seen "Silverlight only" websites at Microsoft and they are pretty impressive. But again, the demos were there to exploit the full potential of what Silverlight can do. The moment you need something different you may be out of luck. I don't see Silverlight like Flash except in the way they are installed/seen. But the Flash/ActionScript backend is really bad compared to what Visual Studio can offer with .NET
Ask yourself why would you like to use Silverlight? Fancy effects or programming model?