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What would be the pros and cons of taking a large (16000 LOC) existing Access 2007/Forms application and porting it to SQL Server 2005, while keeping the Access forms on the front end, versus porting the front end to a .NET technology, say ASP.NET 4.0 or MVC3? The backend is definitely getting ported to SQL Server, with large schema modifications, so this question is about whether to use the existing Access Forms front end or not. I don't take throwing away existing working code lightly! On the other hand, the schema will be changing a lot.
If you had a lot of experience with ASP.NET/Oracle but not with Access or SQL Server, how might this change your answer?
Thanks,
Mike
There is nothing wrong with Access as a front-end to an RDBMS whether SQL Server or another
Porting the front-end but leaving an Access back-end would seem a bit weird: why bother? Access is a good presentation tool but mediocre DBMS. Why keep the mediocre?
Also, only change one component at once no matter what you do: data, then front end. Don't do a big bang approach and change the lot
Actually, comparing going with web application (ASP.NET) and stand-alone (Access) is not truly "apples-to-apples" comparison. It highly depends on your requirements.
Sure, going with web application will require much more developer's efforts comparing to building forms/reports in Access. But, the pay-off will be felt in the mid to long term.
You should also consider scalability, deployment, and availability issues when deciding to go/stay with Access.
Recently Microsoft (via Scottgu) has announced some new technologies (WebMatrix, ASP.NET Razor, IIS Developer Express, SQL Server Compact Edition). I think this is something new direction in which Microsoft is trying to move since launching of ASP.NET MVC. I think the clear target of these new moves are Ruby/Python/PHP/.. developers or current ASP.NET developers who are thinking to move to Ruby/Python/PHP.
What's your opinion?
Will Microsoft be successful in its objective?
The objective is clearly to lower to bar of entry for new developers. Getting a .Net-based website has never been easier and by adding the PHP support they can tempt PHP developers by offering a familiar face in a new environment.
I think this will unleash a new wave of developers discovering .Net web development.
I disagree that WebMatrix is only useful for not-particularly-programmers or novice developers. It is (especially that Razor thing) incredibly useful for developing "one-liner" websites of non-production quality (e. g. to demonstrate some feature or just to provide a test web service for programmer's needs).
I hadn't used WebMatrix enough yet, but it already seems that I can create 50% of a simple web calculator before VS2010 even starts up :-)
Seems to me that its substantially aimed at people who are not particularly programmers - web development for SuperUser.com perhaps? (c.f. the link to Scott Hanselman's blog in my comment to the question) And who don't necessarily want to be "developers" but do want to have some capabilities to go beyond plain HTML.
Its also aimed at demonstrating that there is a complete stack and further that you can deploy applications using that stack to shared hosting without incurring additional costs (which is a new feature enabled by the new release of SQL Server Compact Edition)
Last its an entry point for those who might want to be developers - if you're talking about "developing" a website or a web application its not always the case that the programming involved is complicated
Without playing - I need to set up a VM so I can play in a sandbox - its hard to go further but WebMatrix is composed of a number of very capable tools and therefore offers considerable potential to develop apps beyond what is possible "out of the box".
Their goal:
Simplify and court new developers.
Will they be succesfull:
This seems to me one of the easiest ways to get out a website so I don't see how this can fail.
In response to catbert's comment about WebMatrix being useful for non-production quality sites, I'd like to point out that Rob Conery and Scott Hanselman used WebMatrix to create their This Developer's Life podcast site. Which is not a heavy duty commercial production site, but is definitely not a demo site.
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 develop quite a powerful web application for an investment bank. The bank IT would like us to build it on top of the SharePoint platform, but we would prefer to do pure ASP.NET programming.
The web-app should have the following characteristics.
1) It will be a site for bank's clients that will allow them to view their stock portfolios, get miscellaneous reports with graphs and charts, etc.
2) The web-app will also allow clients to send orders to the bank to buy stocks and perform other financial operations.
3) The number of users will be approximately 3 000 000 (total) and 20 000 at any one time.
We have never made any SharePoint programming, but as far as I know, SharePoint is primarily designed to create intranet sites for colleagues to communicate with each other and work more efficiently, to maintain a document library, etc.
However, the bank IT told us that SharePoint has in fact lots of other features that will help us make the project more efficiently - for example, it seems that SharePoint has some built-in scalability and high availability technologies.
I heard saying that SharePoint development is very tedious, that the platform cannot be very easily customized, etc.
The question is: is it better to create our web-app on pure ASP.NET and deal with scalability and other issues ourselves, or base it on SharePoint - taking into account that the web-app we need to create is non-standard and complex?
Thank you,
Mikhail.
UPDATE
In the answers, someone suggested using ASP.NET MVC. My another question is: should we use "classic" ASP.NET or ASP.NET MVC for such project (if we leave out the SharePoint option)?
Do you need document management? Do you need version management? Do you need to create "sites"? Do you need audience filtering? Do you need ECM (fancy word for CMS), Do you need collaboration stuff on your site? If your answer is no then SharePoint is not for you.
You said "We have never made any SharePoint programming" and for that reason alone I think you should not use SharePoint. You also say that your app is going to be "non-standard" and complex, another reason not to use SharePoint.
Sounds like you know ASP.NET so I would advice to stick with ASP.NET or ASP.NET MVC.
Hope this helps
The answer is simple, you should go with what you know. If you prefer to do it in ASP.NET then, that is what you should go with. Trying to learn a new technology on that size of a project will almost certainty cause you severe problems when trying to develop it. Can sharepoint scale to that number of users, probably, but you don't know how to make it do that. That is the real key.
They are correct SharePoint does have a lot of functionality out of the box, but that doesn't mean that it will make you more efficient, because you don't know all of the APIs etc. to access.
Actually, if you want to know the way to cheat. If they force you into using it, you can run ASP.NET applications under SharePoint (well kind of). You can tell SharePoint to essentially ignore a path in the site and use regular ASP.NET as a web application just like any other site does. Really, this isn't using SharePoint, but it can get you out of a bind, in the "Needs to use SharePoint to make them happy scenario".
Mayo suggested contacting MS. I have a feeling they already have a relationship with the bank and have provided some insight about the project. I would contact: http://www.mindsharp.com/ and see if they can help you out. They are a training company, but I bet that the owners would be willing to help consult, and I haven't found anyone with more knowledge on SharePoint than Todd Bleeker.
I'll not go into the merits of sharepoint, but suffice it to say that I have been developing in sharepoint since it was known as "digital dashboard" - it was just a javascript-encrusted today page for outlook. With respect to its .NET incarnations, it has taken me about 3 years to become what some might call "expert" on SharePoint 2007/MOSS.
First up, let me give you some warnings concerning the politics of these kind of jobs. As a contractor, ALL of my jobs over the last 6 years - covering shaerpoint 2003 and 2007 - WITHOUT fail, have been getting about me on site with a client who has demanded sharepoint, and a development shop with decent ASP.NET developers who have become hopelessly lost and more than likely have blown 95% of the budget on the last 5% of the project because they have embarked on writing custom extensions to the platform without fully understanding the product.
If clients, and the shops who service them, spent more time understand the product and studied it to see how they could change/streamline their business processes & requirements slightly to suit sharepoint instead of being rigid in their specs (that were ALWAYS written with next to zero real experience of the platform) and deciding to get custom development done, then more sharepoint projects would be delivered on time and on budget. Sadly, this is not the case.
So, number one: SharePoint 2007 is an excellent product, but please, for the love of jeebus, find yourselves some top gun sharepoint developers who really understands the product before you embark on this journey. If you don't, you will all go down in flames.
-Oisin
What a load of CRAP that sharepoint isn't cut out for what the op wants to use it for. Especially the "Do not get yourself wrapped up in SharePoint" comment from ChaosPandion. Maybe he thought it to difficult and gave up...
Sure SharePoint development takes some getting used to, but it is able to what is wanted by the op most definately. SharePoint is built using ASP.NET so anything you do in ASP.NET can be used / ported to SharePoint. It is not a standalone product, but a DEVELOPMENT PLATFORM. It will scale to serve that many users, using multiple WFE's (Web Front Ends) and a SQL Cluster as backend.
The question here is: is sharepoint the most suited platform for building this site? Then I would have to answer, probably not, seeing as the wanted functionality is almost all custom development. If you plan on doing web content management as well, then yes, SharePoint is definately worth looking into. Also, SharePoint takes away all (or at least most :-D) authorisation and authentication wories. It is Department of Defense certified. And if the offered out of the box security is not enough, just write an authentication provider (seeing as SharePoint uses ASP.NET's provider model).
To answer your questions:
The bank IT told us that SharePoint has in fact lots of other features that will help us make the project more efficiently - for example, it seems that SharePoint has some built-in scalability and high availability technologies.
SharePoint is farm based, to which you can add machines, having each machine perform a different task, which means either app server, index server, WFE, document conversion services., WFE's can be behind a load balancer to distribute requests. Also I want to mention the web content management again.
I heard saying that SharePoint development is very tedious, that the platform cannot be very easily customized, etc.
Like I said, SharePoint is based on ASP.NET, so it is as much customizable as ASP.NET is. You could even create an ASP.NET web site, put all UI in Controls and then use those is SharePoint, maybe even have the controls use it's own database. As for it being tedious, not really. It's just DIFFERENT and deployment / testing is not like normal deployment / testing. SharePoint uses so called solution files (.wsp files), to package up functionality and deploy it to the server. This IMHO makes it possible to deploy functionality in a very modular way. Furthermore, there are loads of cool open source projects out there that make sharepoint development much easier and also provide cool extensions to "pimp" your site and make it more fun and easy to use for end-users.
Nuff said....
SharePoint development can be tedious but I'd hardly say the platform cannot be easily customized. I recently began developing with it full time and so far, I impressed at it's flexibility and suitability for my application but my needs are quite different from what you've described.
I understand 2007 is a vast improvement over 2003 so perhaps your information is only outdated. I hear 2010 is going to again be a significant improvement.
It's your job to deliver the functionality that the customer desires. If they desire a SharePoint solution, unless there's some particular reason why SharePoint really is a weaker model, that's what you should be able to deliver. In the event that SharePoint isn't a good fit, you need to be able to explain why to the bank's satisfaction. I'm not convinced "We don't know SharePoint" is an acceptable response in this situation: the bank's inclination should, at that point, be to find someone who knows both technologies well enough to deliver a product in SharePoint or better explain why SharePoint isn't actually what they want.
UPDATE: After looking at this more I would add that I do not believe that SharePoint is for you. As I mention below SharePoint is for collaboration. If the users that come to the site require an isolated experience then SharePoint is more overhead than you need.
SharePoint is built on top of ASP.NET so you have everything that you want to do with ASP.NET in addition to what SharePoint provides. Anyone who says that it is difficult is trying to make it that way. You can deploy stand alone custom pages with 100% of your own code and it will run under sharepoint, or you can create new application pages that also contain any code you want to write, or you can simply add your own webparts that can be added to any page you choose with 100% of your own code.
Here is just one example.
Creating an Application Page in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
What SharePoint offers on top of that is a whole different paradigm on collaboration tools. If you wish to leverage it (if not the cost on return is somewhat limited) you can build amazingly complex and integrated solutions that is build around the aggregation of data from across an enterprise.
That being said, do not go into it lightly. If deployed wrong or with a half understanding of where SharePoint excels and where it does not will result in a diaster. Unless you have the time to understand the core concepts of SharePoint I would warn against it but your client is right. If you do build it in SharePoint you get a great deal more flexibility. One right off the bat is the ability to mix authentication modes. I designed a solution that mixed custom forms authentication with an LDAP backend with Windows Authentication. Anyone could visit the same pages but your authenticated account could come from two different locations.
This is a matter of what kind of concerns you want to have in the application:
Building it to look and function your way, go with sharepoint.
Building it to have infrastructure for authentication, permissions, http/web security, scalability, backup, database maintenance PLUS getting it to look and function your way (but now way more under your control), go with a more pure .NET approach.
I would pick the one I am best at, as Kevin said above.
Edit
More about Kevins post: you can also have your application under sharepoint but with full access to the API, in my projects we do it as a normal ASP.NET application, with own masterpages and everything, but we still use the authentication, lists and doc libraries for uploads, roleassignments for permissions etc. Its a very viable hybrid.
You said,
I heard saying that SharePoint
development is very tedious, that the
platform cannot be very easily
customized, etc.
You have been misinformed about SharePoint. All SharePoint pages are ASP.NET pages. You can customize any of them, either directly, or by using Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer, which is free.
Get started at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/default.aspx.
SharePoint is a lot of work and with that amount of users I personally (and being a SharePoint developer) wouldn't bother.
I would go down the ASP.MVC route in all honesty and not because it's new and the latest buzz technology. I would use it because it's hands down faster. This site for example is written in ASP.NET MVC and it handles all these requests per day on I think 3 servers. 2 front end and 1 database. Correct my if I'm wrong with that.
The problem with asking whether Sharepoint is easy to customize is that there's a wide range of levels of customization people are experienced with. And for some reason, most people also seem to think that whatever level they customized Sharepoint to is the extent to which anyone else would also try to customize Sharepoint.
It's hard to talk about degrees of customization in concrete terms. What is "customization" to me is wrangling with the core DAL, fighting with bugs in the CAML to SQL query optimizers, overriding the SPListItem hydration pipeline, etc. To others, "customization" might mean building some web part widgets and deploying them in a WSP. If you find that there is some impedance mismatch between your logical model and Sharepoint's working model, you will have a really hard time reconciling the two.
Welcome to the dark land of politics.
It's worth making sure that your team properly evaluate and understand any compromises that SharePoint will have you make. Asking here is a good start. Things I'd look at include:
What's the whole solution going to include? Often the administration of a site can involve as much or more development work as the front end. While the 3M+ user front end is the glamorous part it may not be the bulk of the work.
Are there reference sites for 20K+ simultaneous user SharePoint sites? Honestly? What kind of hardware did that require? Is that available?
Get a small group of experienced contractors in for a few weeks to properly estimate the work, both on ASP.NET MVC and SharePoint. Make sure they've worked on large sites. (There's plenty of contractors around at the moment!)
Also, anticipate failure. Have a fall-back option:
If the MVC technologists win out, expect heat from senior management, and possibly even a skunk-works we'll-do-it-properly-anyway project that duplicates your efforts.
If you do end up with SharePoint, listen very carefully to users throughout the development process and be prepared to create Web parts, MVC pages or whathaveyou to address problem points.
I've been in a similar situation where it turned out that there was heavy vendor influence at a very senior level. The senior team had bought into SharePoint and required it to be used for all internal systems; the OCTO (Office of the Chief Technologist) had mandated open-source technologies. It was fun to watch the fur fly in the middle.
(Our option in the end was to use a service-based architecture based on REST, which effectively booted the current version of SharePoint out of the system altogether.)
I would build this on SharePoint. It is quite suitable for big sites and many sites have already been built on it: topsharepoint.com
SharePoint (like all complex applications) does require sufficient knowledge that you do not seem to have at the moment which is a big risk in my mind. Don't listen to the nay-sayers though.. lack of knowledge is a common problem for devs dealing with SharePoint but it doesn't mean you can't make it do whatever you want.
Regardless, what other options do you have? I think the days of building completely custom CMS's have passed just as building completely custom Intranets are not cost effective anymore. There are many competitors to what they want to do with SharePoint (Umbraco, Sitecore, Sitefinity, etc) and most of them seem better than 100% custom.
So the answer might be neither ASP.NET or Sharepoint..
I am in process of evaluating MOSS (SharePoint) and traditional ASP.NET for my client's site. The site will be available to client's partners over the internet. I'm interested in differences between these two approaches from following perspectives:
Development perspective. How does development differs? What are pros and cons of both approaches?
Performance perspective. Which platform shall deliver better performance?
By now, we know that not much features of MOSS can be used out-of-the-box, and the features will be added using web parts.
The big difference that you need to be aware of is the licencing. To use MOSS over the internet will require an Internet licence. The actual cost depends on what deal you have with MS, but it is a significant cost.
We have found that it is more costly to develop for Sharepoint than ASP.net pages. Especially due to requirements for the development environment and deployment problems.
From a performance perspective it depends on how you program it. With ASP.net you have more control and therefore, should be able to get better performance.
Do not use MOSS unless you are leveraging the functionality that MOSS provides.
SharePoint out of the box has a lot of great features you will not be able to duplicate as easily. For instance the Office integration. With SharePoint your client can share documents ( word, excel, etc ) and have them kept under revision control.
You can easily setup individual portals for their clients where they can have discussions, share documents, communicate, etc.
SharePoint is also a content management system. Your client can add/edit/remove content as they wish. With MOSS they get the benefit of publishing workflows as well as being able to roll back their changes/deletes. The publishing workflows could spawn an approval process for the changes. Built in
SharePoint's workflow support is a one of the top benefits. You can create them with SharePoint Designer. SharePoint Designer is free from MS. InfoPath forms + workflows provides some obscene opportunities you will not develop as easily on your own.
SharePoint Designer provides an avenue to develop more advanced solutions than the web interface as well as site branding ( look & feel ).
Best thing is, if you create 1 solution, you can bundle it and deploy it. For instance if you setup 1 client portal, you can bundle it and "copy" it to new client portals.
MOSS is a set of additional functionality that you pay for. It can be expensive. You have to leverage the cost of licensing against the cost for you to duplicate what is already available.
Depending on what your client wants you might not even need Visual Studio. A lot of the work can be done by building solutions with whats already there, which is a lot.
Frankly, I don't understand why people compare SharePoint and ASP.NET as if they were competing products. If you need majority of the features of SharePoint (collaboration, workflow, communities, office integration, document management etc), then it may be worth your while to use SharePoint rather than re-inventing everything.
But if you are developing a classic web application, why bring MOSS into the picture? Unless your clients already have MOSS in place and would rather use it to host their apps. And if your clients are really gung ho about SharePoint, you might want to remind them that SharePoint licensing is very expensive while ASP.NET is free!
Part of the curse and blessing of SharePoint is it's ability to be infinitely customized. Most of the features of SharePoint can either be used as-is, customized with SharePoint Designer or replaced entirely by writing your own C# code. This is a blessing because it means SharePoint is infinitely customizable. It's a curse because customizing it can be a royal pain.
That last comment "Do not use MOSS unless you are leveraging the functionality that MOSS provides" by Shiraz Bhaiji hits it on the money.
And I'll even expand on that. Do not use MOSS unless someone in your organization is going to force everyone in the organization to use the MOSS. Because if people aren't forced to learn how to use it and change their ways, you're wasting time and money by migrating to it. Most places I've seen, people continue to use their file shares, and email (Exchange) to share and collaborate with. They never end up using their Sharepoint. I don't know how common that is, however, if you suspect that'll be the case with your organization you should give this aspect more concern.
One of the biggest parts and focuses of MOSS and WSS is "Collaboration" and ECM (Enterprise Content Management). If your clients/partners can utilize these features sharepoint would be a success.
In addition, since MOSS is part of the office 2007 system, it is fully integrated with all office programs and using Exel Services and Infopath Form Services, your users would be able to enjoy web-based Excel and forms without having to install them.
I would also strongly discourage using MOSS if you have to do any sort of customization. If it does what you need out of the box, then great, but otherwise you'll quickly burn time and resources trying to dance around it.
I can't tell from your question whether or not you're aware that SharePoint is built on ASP.NET and Windows Workflow Foundation.
The big difference in my mind is that the Development model for SharePoint assumes that you are developing against a server. This is not as big a deal as it used to be, since it's practical for each developer to run Windows Server 2008 in a private VM. Still, there's no "Visual Studio Web Development Server" when SharePoint is involved.
See Sharepoint tools support in Visual Studio from Somasegar's Weblog, especially the many comments (72 at last count).
Performance wise, it's a tricky one to answer, as it's very depending upon how your custom solution is developed, what hardware platform you're planning on deploying the solution to, etc. I think most people would agree that, in general, MOSS will be slower than an ASP.NET application written in house, primarily because it's unlikely to be as complex and expansive as MOSS.
That said, it's very easy to deploy MOSS across a network load balanced farm (obviously increasing the licensing costs significantly), and share the load that way, thus getting a pretty significant performance boost over a more traditional ASP.NET app deployed to a standalone server.
As others have said re: development, it's incredibly dependant on what you're actually wanting out of the end solution. As Dr said, it would be a major development effort to reimplement some of the core MOSS features, such as it's Office integration, it's document management, version control and fine grain permissions.
If you feel that you're going to have customise a large chunk of MOSS, then the development effort can be quite involved, especially if you don't have anyone in house familiar with the process. It's a big product, and finding your way around it's innards and API is no small task when first starting out.
I should mention that we've had a lot of clients who have gone into MOSS evaluations thinking that there will be a significant amount of work customising, etc, but not realising that actually, 90% of what they want to achieve can be so with minimum development efforts, it's usually more a lack of understand of all the options available to them within MOSS.
I have written a blog entry which compares the traditional ASP.net and the SharePoint apps. You can see that here:
http://manish-sharepoint.blogspot.com/2008/05/comparing-sharepoint-server-with-aspnet.html
HTH