asp.net app deployed as a stand alone application

[sholist]

I have an application that needs to conform to some finicky clients.
The goal is to make the application an asp.net app and host it on the
web for our clients which has many benefits as everyone knows. However,
some clients will not be too happy about us hosting their data and
would preffer that they deploy the applications to their desktops and
host the database themseleves.

So I have 2 delivery methods to contend with, but I require that they
share the same code base with no changes to the business logic and UI.
It would be nice to create the application as an asp.net app that we
host, and also have the option to distribute that app to clients as a
stand-alone windows application with the same code.

One option I have seen is using the cassani web server for this task,
however there is not much out there about deploying applications like
that. What are some of the things to concider in this arrangement? Are
there any other, or any better options to accomplish this? I am tried
from reasearch and would like some opinions of the community.

Thanks!

 

[Norman Yuan]

ASP.NET is a web application that you have no way to "deploy" it as Windows
desktop app, no matter what server you use. If you want a desktop app, you
need to develop one. If you layered your ASP.NET very well, you may have
seperated module/components for your data access and/or business logic that
can use used in the desktop app, without any change, or with very few
changes, but the user interface must be re-do from scratch.

If the client is only concerned with hosing their data outside their office,
you can simply run your ASP.NET app in their intranet inside their office.
Of course they need a IIS server and database server (if your app uses one).