asp.net scheduling / booking system - asp.net

We want to try fast track developing a booking/scheduling system for a doctor's room.
The faster to market the better!
End of the day, a scheduling product is dirt standard, and i reckon that there must be a ton of good components out there. It just takes time to go through and evaluate.
Ideally we want to do this in asp.net - the system needs to be web based.
Can anyone reccomend something that they have already played with?
Doesn't have to be a freeby. The speedier the dev the better >:)
Thanks

Using Application Framework from DevXpress http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/Application_Framework/ you can build a simple scheduler with Outlook like interface in a few hours.
Of course, if you are using .NET platform

Have you thought about integrating it with Exchange. It has all that you are looking for probably.

I highly recommend Quartz.Net, you can write a simple service very easily to handle all you scheduling needs.

Check out DotNetNuke, they have a lot of addins/extensions that would probably accomplish what you are looking for, and it is open source.

Related

How can MVC 3 Architecture be used along with WF4 in .Net 4.0 Framework

I need help / advice on the below scenario.
We are planning to develop a web application which can handles millions of transaction per week with the below technologies.
1. WF4 for Work Flow definition / Business logic etc..
2. WPF for Application Design
Question 1:
We are also considering MVC3. Is it really necessary to use MVC3 with WF4 or we can go ahead with the traditional WebForms? We have absolutely no idea and we are confused. Ultimately we want to increase the developers productivity time by decrease the coding time.
Question 2:
Is it possible to use MVC3 with WF4? If so, please provide me some resources. There is very limited resources for this combo.
Your help is appreciated.
Performance in MVC is going to be better 'out of the box' so to say because of the lack of viewstate and the ability for lightweight responses using JSON.
If you are looking at a high performance site and aren't sure what to use - I would recommend MVC. There will be a slight learning curve but in the end I think you will be thankful you did. Unit testing alone is so much easier.
re workflow:
Since code can trigger off a workflow, you absolutely can use it. Just call your workflow, there's nothing special there.
The first google result for running from asp.net
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163623.aspx
You can expose your workflow via a service, call directly, etc.

How to use NHibernate with asp.net 3.5

I want to use NHibernate with Asp.net 3.5 but i don't know how to use it.I search on
Google but couldn't find the complete explanation about why to use NHibernate,Advantages of using it and integration with Asp.net projects.
I would suggest checking out Castle and NHibernate. I recently started using it and was blown away with what it can do. Castle manages all your sessions for you. Also it is easy to use LINQ with it.
Check out
http://davidhayden.com/blog/dave/archive/2008/04/28/NHibernateCastleActiveRecordTutorialUninitiated.aspx
Another great tool to use (Should work with ASP.Net) is the Nhibernate Profiler
http://nhprof.com/ It shows you what queries are being generated and the time its taking to run.
Also if you already have your database created you can download this tool http://www.agilityfororms.com/Home/Products/AfoCastleActiveRecordModelCodeGenerator/ It will create your models based on your database. Its works great for the most part. Although you have to register to download the free version still worth checking out.
Fluent NHibernate is supposed to be good as well although I have no experience with it. Might be worth checking out. http://fluentnhibernate.org/
You could have a look at this :
http://www.codegod.de/WebAppCodeGod/nhibernate-tutorial-1---and-aspnet-AID25.aspx
And this :
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/architecture/NHibernateBestPractices.aspx
I'm nearing completion of my first project with it, and I've had mixed results. For basic data persistence, and assuming you already knew how to use it, it's much faster to build an application with it. You don't really have to worry about building stored procs and differentiating between new objects and updated objects.
On the other hand, until you're quite comfortable with it, it can take a long time to do something that would have been simple before. I've had a couple of problems, and it has been difficult and time consuming finding solutions to them.
To be fair, I've only written small applications with it and it has made the development process more difficult than I would consider required. The pain of using it is fairly similar from one app to the next, the benefits scale...
The best place to look is at NHibernate Forge. There's Blogs, wikis and groups that will help you out.
As for advantages of using it that is something you need to workout for yourself. Is it more advantageous than LinqToSql or Entity Framework? It depends on the project size and what you are actually looking for.

Best Environment for job portal site

I planned to develop the job portal as similar to naukri/monster.
I'm going to do through ASP.NET. For this, what is the best environment.
At early, I planned to use "Dot Net Nuke" and then I came to know that its for CMS,
Shall I go with MVC framework for this or anything is there which is good than MVC. I don't have any experience on web based application, but I'm good enough in C#.
A CMS isn't going to be flexible enough to allow you to accomplish the types of things you'll need to do for a job board type website. I would stick with MVC or even WebForms if you're completely new to the web.
Unless this is a pet project to help you learn how to program for the web, you may want to start smaller and get some experience before trying something like this. Developing for the web is a completely different animal than just knowing some c#. There are a ton of other technologies you will need to know, including HTML, JavaScript or JavaScript library such as jQuery, stateless design, etc.
We had a similar question while we were developing a job site for our client. After weighing all the pros and cons we finally decided to go with PHP. We found that the performance of the site in terms of speed was much better and needed far less resources. In the end the client was happy with the decision we helped them make.

ASP.NET: Scheduled tasks

While the economy has been in the shitter, I've written possibly the most coolest site EVER for unemployed developers looking to buzzword-ify their resumes. (Don't hate the player, hate the game.)
The only problem is, it needs a scheduled task to run once a day to do some data mining. I spent many, many hours a few months ago researching solutions, but nothing seemed sure-fire.
If I have shared hosting and cannot remote in (e.g. mstsc and create a Schedule Task), how can I create a task that will run once a day on the backend of an ASP.NET website?
After all the research I did, I don't think it's possible. Per my last analysis, someone has to visit the site at least once a day to instantiate an instance of HttpApplication.
Does anyone have any solution to making sure an operation runs automatically, no matter whether anyone visits the site, and without anything but FTP access to the website?
Like I said, I've done A LOT of looking into this in the past, and it didn't seem possible. IF YOU HAVE EXPERIENCE implementing a solution, please, contribute your advice! But not postulating or conjecturing needed--it's far more nuanced and difficult than you're surely imagining.
I had a similar problem. I wrote a cheap utility that issued a web request from my desktop to my web app on a regular schedule.
How To: Send Data Using the WebRequest Class
You could have a look at Quartz.NET for scheduling jobs.
DotNetNuke which is a popular open source .net content management system does this. You can download the source and see exactly how they did it.
I agree with HackedByChinese, but if you don't want to run it from your desktop, you could get something like http://aremysitesup.com/ to ping your site for you.
Can you schedule a task in SQL Server that could call a CLR function? Your hosting provider may not allow either ot both of those, but if they do, then you are golden.
You can use ATrigger scheduling service. A .Net library is also available to create scheduled tasks without overhead.
You can set to call your datamining URL every 1day.
Related example: http://atrigger.com/docs/wiki/17/use-case-delayed-processing
Benefits:
Reporting
Error Log
Tasks List
Great Timing Features
Disclaimer: I was among the ATrigger team. It's a freeware and I have not any commercial purpose.

Is Asp.net and Windows Workflow good combination?

I am implementing a quite simple state-machine order processing application. It is a e-commerce application with a few twists. The users of the application will not be editing workflows by themselves.
Microsoft claims that asp.net and Windows Workflow is possible to combine. How hard is it to install and maintain a combination of asp.net and Windows Workflow? I would be keeping the workflow state in sql-server.
Is it easier for me to roll my own state machine code or is Windows Workflow the right tool for the job?
Asp.net and WF get along just fine, and WF doesn't add much maintenance overhead.
Whether or not this is the right design for you depends a lot on your needs. If you have a lot of event driven actions then WF might be worthwhile, otherwise the overhead of rolling your own tracking would probably add less complexity to the system.
WF is reasonably easy to work with so I'd suggest working up a prototype and experimenting with it.
Also, in my opinion, based on your requirements, I doubt WF would be the right solution for you.
It depends on your needs. How complex is the state machine? Where do you want the state machine to live (e.g. model vs. database)? WWF provides an event based state machine, which is good enough if your state machine is embedded in the model.
Personally I've implemented an e-commerce framework and other workflow based websites and I've have always had a lot of joy from implementing database based state machines. Always worked without a hitch.
On the other hand, some colleagues of mine prefer WWF.
In any case it works perfectly with ASP.NET.
If your state machine is very simple, then I would say that you should just roll your own. You have more control over everything. You can deal with persistence on your own terms and not worry about how they do it.
WF does look pretty cool though, but I think that it's power probably lies in the fact that it is easy to tie it into frameworks like CRM and Sharepoint. If you are going to use these in your application, then I would definitely consider using WF.
Full disclosure: I am definitely not a WF expert.

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