I am working on small application of sharepoint.
There two ways in which WE can access Sharepoint data:
1.By Using Microsoft.Sharepoint.dll In this case you need to do coding on same machine (windows server).
2.Second way is to use Sharepoint Web Services. This will allow developer to do developement work on different machine.
But which way i should prefer?
Regards,
Jene
That all depends on what you want to do and where you want to run it. The SharePoint object model (Microsoft.SharePoint.dll) is substantially faster than the web services, but like you said, it only runs on the SharePoint machine. So, if you are on the SharePoint machine, definitely use the object model, otherwise, use the web services.
You don't have to develop on the same machine, but you do need to develop on server with SharePoint installed. I can tell you from experience that the web services are not the nicest to work with...I would use the SharePoint object model.
Just saying "development on my production server" makes me cringe. To that end, you may want to look into using some kind of VMWare to do your development on. You can install Sharepoint and Visual studio on the virtual machine to do your development. The only issues with you doing it this way is that you are not going to have the same content (the lists and other user created libraries/sites), but you can easily make your own to resemble your production environment (as is usually the case with most dev environments).
One thing to consider is database connections. If you create a seperate application using the SharePoint DLL then your DB connections will be managed through your application. So your application will have to run using an account that has read/write privs to the SharePoint database.
If you use the web services then this is not the case since the database connections will be handled inside the IIS Application Pool (like a normal SharePoint web site).
Unless you are unable to deploy solutions to the SharePoint server due to corporate security policies, shared hosting or similar, you will want to use the object model. Get a SharePoint VM (one of the evaluation virtual pc downloads from Microsoft is a good starting point if you haven't set one up before) and WSPBuilder, and it's easy enough to make packages to be deployed to the server.
Related
I have tried looking for a way in which we can deploy a web application on a clients computer like a software and of methods in which we can update that web application. I have given the whole scenario below.. Any suggestions / recommendations in best architecture to use are also welcome!
If you have 1000 Users for Your Application They all need a working local(IIS server) to run your app on browser ,as was well as a Sql server to store local data while user in offline, i think this is too expensive,...i don't have idea about any other alternative
deploy website on local iis
MSDN
I did a windows application project with C#. Now, I wanna to run it as web application.(I mean, i want to install the application on server and the user from other places can connect to the server with a web link and test it).Since all the user do not have the visua studio software, I forced to do that. May you help me to figure this problem out?
Thanks in advance
You can't do that. You can have people be able to Remote Desktop to the server and then run the application. If you wanted it to be accessible via URL, you have to build a webpage.
Short answer: you can't run a Windows application directly in a web environment. And really there is NO WAY you should want that, either.
If you need remote access to the computer running the instance of your application, that can be done with the right software. I can think of TeamViewer, Radmin and Remote Desktop on top of my head.
If support for multiple concurrent users is required then you have two obvious choices:
Deploy your application on every clients, or
Make a Web application.
Now for option 1, there are different ways to do that. Depending of the complexity of your app you may require a Windows Installer setup package. For this there is multiple tools on the net. My personal favorite is WiX. Free, powerful and easy once you get the hang of it. Most installers will also ensure that requirements for the app to run are met, and install the missing components if necessary.
If all you have is a simple EXE file then you could be tempted to just package (ZIP) it and share it any way you want, but be warned: if the correct .NET Framework isn't installed on the client machine, it won't work. IMHO given the tools at your disposition to ensure a proper installation experience for the end user, you have no reason to do that. You can, however, consider using ClickOnce for this scenario.
If that doesn't help you, then please add more details on what your requirements are, maybe you'll get better advice.
PS: About "not every users having the Visual Studio software"... having VS installed should never, EVER be a requirement for the regular user.
You can't just run a Windows application as a Web Application. You need to re-write it as a web application. The users do not need Visual Studio to run your application as you have mentioned in your question. If you give some details of what your application does then maybe you will get some better help.
If you wrote your application using WPF it is possible to deploy it as an XBAP.
There are restrictions associated with deploying an application this way.
The minimum you would need to do is create a Web Application to host said XBAP.
I am writing a Windows application using C#. I am planning on later to allow it to be controlled over the intranet using browser also. So in future we should be able to control it both using the local interface or over the intranet from the browser.
Is there any pre-defined architecture which will allow me to do this? What are the methods of achieving this? I am new to C#/.Net.
EDIT:
The windows application needs to access the communication ports extensively, and needs to be pretty stable and would probably run for some days together.
Thanks...
I can't tell you if a specific package exists that would ease the development. But, if I were to attempt it, after Googling and not finding something already available and meeting my needs, I would likely make my application a WCF host. Create service entry points to accept control messages remotely. You would also need some well-know location where to register your application so the remote system could find it. You should be sure to provide the user with a way of disabling the application remote control feature.
Your host interface will need to run on its own thread to remain performant. Since you are new to C#, and presumably windows forms application development, you will need to read up on how to properly talk to the GUI controls from a non-GUI thread.
Alternatively, you may want to implement your application as two distinct units, one with a GUI that does all the user interaction. It would form service requests to send to the host portion (with no GUI). Your app could then operate locally or be controlled remotely.
One solution I have used in a similar situation has three parts :-
1) Win32 (local) Service
Manages the COM ports and does whatever is necessary with the attached hardware
2) WinForms/Console Application
Runs on the local machine and communicates with the local service via named pipes or TCP.
3) Web Server + Web App
Runs on local or remote machine & communicates with local service.
The local user can shut the WinForms application down and log-off without affecting the service or remote users.
The newest version of Silverlight (the version that ships with Visual Studio 2010) allows what Microsoft terms the "Out Of Browser Experience" (OOB for short).
This allows the user to set up the Silverlight application as a desktop application as well as running through a browser.
Rudi Grobbler has just blogged about how he went about setting this up on his PC.
Hey guys, I was working on a simple chat program to brush up on my C#, and ran into a roadblock. I wanted to allow one computer to broadcast its location, and the other to find that computer, and display it (and any others) in a list.. Just a push in the right direction would be great,
Thanks,
Max
Mono.Zeroconf is a .NET library that provides common zeroconf opertations - service publish and discovery. It uses Apple's Bonjour for Windows as a transport on Windows.
Developers can publish services that will be exposed to other computers on the local network and also query the local machines on the network for services that could have been exposed.
See Peer-to-Peer Programming with WCF and .NET Framework 3.5.
All you need is to share destination PC. and then run your web-based application on the target pc IIS.
Updated Part :
If you have awindows application and want users use that application youhave some solution
create a Login form for your application
use from MarshalByRef object and create a Channel between user andaplication
create a MSI (setup) and run it from server (in entire Active Directory).this will install one application in each client
create a simple dot net setup. justRight click onyour windowsproject in VS and then select Publich, in the wizard walk through creating a network application
I think the last option is closest one to your request
Use AD (Active Directory)? Or some such [which would serve as] central messageboard mechanism - maybe even MSMQ?
I've been writing desktop apps in C# for some time now but I'm increasingly getting frustrated with the fact that not everyone has .NET 2 or Higher installed. I don't have the option of upgrading their systems to meet my needs. My apps are mostly utilities that run alongside the main program the company I work for has. They access the file system and the registry. Being relatively new to programming in general, I was wondering if moving these tools to the web would solve some of my problems. But I have no idea if web apps can have access to these parts of Windows. I was thinking of writing these web apps in either Rails or ASP.NET. So my question is this. Can a web app access and modify the registry and file system of Windows?
Thanks.
Nope, "web apps" like asp.net or rails apps run on the server alone and just serve html to the client. So all the client-side code can do is what jscript running in the browser sandbox can do, ie no file access or registry access.
You can however install an activex on the client computer that gets full access, but the user has to agree to install it as it's a security risk.
Writing the apps as Web apps instead (and Rails is cool to use) is a good option - your users don't need to install anything, upgrades are easy to do, and dependancies are no longer a problem.
However, you now need to start re-architecting your apps so they do not need to write anything to the client, except a cookie (that's stored in the browser). If you can do this, then migrating to a webapp will be great.
If you cannot, my advice is to learn the same language that your company's app is written in. Once you do that, the company app will have taken care of the dependencies already and you will just need to offer your utilities alongside the app, perhaps even in the installer, or just to copy the files into a subdirectory. If you're thinking of learning Ruby, then learning the corporate language will be just as difficult (only you'll be able to reuse a lot of code used in the main app)
No, a traditional asp.net application cannot access the file system or registry on the windows box. Simply put because it doesn't actually run on the client machine. Instead it runs on the server where it does not have access to the local machine.
It is possible to have portions of the application which run on the client machine. Browser based applications for instance. However these would require that the 2.0 framework be installed on the customers machine which puts you right back at square #1.
No, this isn't possible. Web applications cannot modify the registry and/or file system on a user's machine because of the security implications. You would need to develop a Windows app to do these kind of changes. You could always make this tool available for download on your website though.
No, you can't do that with a web application. Besides others have already said, a web application run in a browser, not inside an operating system, so all you can do is what browsers allows you to do and not all you want, and browsers doesn't allows you to take control of the host machine.
I'm guessing the desktop app used in your company uses the registry to store workstation / user specific (state)data.
Moving to a web based app does not mean storing state data is no longer possible, just account for it by including a table in your database that can be used to save that same (state)data in. The registry is no longer needed.
Another pro is that by moving to a fully webbased application, you never have to worry about your endusers, because the code is running on the server, all the enduser gets is the output in html :-D.
The only thing to keep in mind is cross browser compatibility, don't create an app that works in IE only for instance, it has to look and work the same in all major browsers.
There are a few products out there, such as Xenocode and VMWare's ThinApp, that allow you to virtualize your app's dependencies to the point where your .NET app can run on a machine without the .NET Framework installed. Just another option from left field.