WindowsForms Data Binding Over Internet

[Hazz Polo]

Hi Guys,

I have been doing a lot of research on what is the best architecture to bind
a WindowsForms Application to data across the Internet.

Scenario: My company is hosting all data in SQLServer2000 and running
IIS/ASPNET
The Client applications will be deployed outside our network. Its a typical
scenario, but seems like there is too many solutions

Is Remoting a more efficient way to expose all data manipulation objects,
does it need to be synchronized from scratch for all data updating and
binding?? Should DataSets be serialized to the client and bound to the forms
and will they handle the sync?
I saw somewhere that in the SQLConnection string, you can put in something
like "Server=http://111.111.222.222/" to connect the DataAdapter over
internet..is that true?

Can anyone please shed some more light??

Thanks a lot.

 

[Ken Tucker [MVP]]

Hi,

Take a look at webservices.

Ken

 

[Hazz Polo]

Hi Ken,

Thanks for the tip.

But there seems to be a wide difference in opinions between Remoting and
WebServices. Lot of people suggest Remoting with http + binary formatting..
I would really appreciate some more advice. For building an Enterprise wide
app, deployed over the internet, consisting
of 10 modules and 100s of forms and tables, I was looking into WinForms
Clients, Remoting and SQLServer2000.

Its an OO legacy I guess to build custom objects for data manipulation and
binding. But with DataSets, there is more flexibility and function to bind.
So it would be a good idea to serialize DataSets to the client and back. Now
should they be serialized via Web Services or Remoting?
And are they two-way, as in are updates to client conveniently handled by
the DataSet or is there lot of programming involved. I'm also just at the
tip of the iceberg, so maybe I'm asking some novice questions. But I've seen
that Web Services involves creating a whole bunch of files, .wsdl, .aspx,
etc.

Any directions on some real efficient ways(performance,deployment ease,
firewall compliance over RAD) to two-way databind WinForms across Internet?

Thanks again!!

 

[Mike Demmons]

There is an excellent sample application that
demonstrates very nicely what your trying to do.

Go to www.windowsforms.net and lookup the TaskVision
sample application.

It demonstrates the use of web-services with WindowsForms
apps.

........../mike

 

[B]

Remoting over Http Binary would surely be the way to go.

a few tips on how to go about this

Implement custom serialization for your datasets . This can be done easily
by making all your datasets inherit from a class which implements custom
serialiazation. This would reduce the size of datasets by nearly 90%

Implement a smartclient approach to your application for being able to pick
up the application changes from the server. There are several ways to do
this including the microsoft applicatioin updater bloc. a simple solution
would be download a manifest file from the server on application start up
which would describe the application version information .

if u need help with the above let me know i can send u some code

Regards

BIjoy

 

[Rajesh.V]

Bijoy,

Could u post the code to make the dataset size down by 90%. Dataset is
already a serializable object. Are u meaning to say use TypedDataset

 

[Hazz Polo]

Hi Bijoy,

Yea that is interesting..90%..could you post the code for the custom
serializers or give some hints
Also, what are your thoughts on databinding issues with the design that you
suggested? Is it safe to directly bind the deserialized datasets to the
Smart Client(Windows Forms of course). I am still at the tip as I'd said
before..so is it a real pain to implement 2 way binding in your experience?

Also, is that Ingorammer book a must have?

Thanks a lot.

H