CODEWITHSUNDEEP
winformssilverlight
Todd
Todd

Reputation: 1822

Winforms or Silverlight

I have a small project that I will be working on shortly that collects employees time and what project the person was working on. Pretty straight forward. I was orginally going to work on it in WinForms but since im new to that I though maybe using Silverlight for the application since I will have a learning curve for each. Here is a couple of business requirements that i need to incorporate into the application.

-System will use an Access database hosted on a particular persons computer. -Ability to generate and print reports -Installed on the emploees desktop who will have access.

Would one technology be recommended over the other in terms of what I need to do. Here is a screen mockup of one of the pages I will need to create.

http://teewebco.com/images/main-copy.png

Upvotes: 2

Views: 270

Answers (4)

Sorantis
Sorantis

Reputation: 14732

Silverlight 3 lets your application to run on desktop as well. So I'd write it on silverlight. Yet another technology to master.

Upvotes: 0

Paully
Paully

Reputation: 570

Winforms and WPF are easier than Silverlight when you have to access a database because you can do it directly. If your install base uses only .net 2.0 then stick with WinForms, if you know they can install .NET 3.5 then try out WPF. Just be warned, there is more to learn with WPF and XAML but it's very rewarding especially if you want to get fancy.

Upvotes: 0

MusiGenesis
MusiGenesis

Reputation: 75396

Since it's a local (desktop) app which needs to access a local resource (Access database), it's probably better to do winforms.

However, you might be better off doing this as WPF instead - it's more current than winforms.

Upvotes: 2

Craig Shearer
Craig Shearer

Reputation: 14541

If you want access to the machine on which the application will run (e.g. to access a database, and to use printing), that pretty much rules out Silverlight, without jumping through a lot of hoops (e.g. having to install something on the user's machine anyway).

You say that WinForms will require a learning curve for you - well you might as well use WPF then, as it's a similar technology from the UI perspective as Silverlight. However, you can proably find a lot more resources online for WinForms though, and it's likely you'd be more productive in WinForms given its strong Visual Studio designer support.

Deployment with WinForms or WPF should be fairly easy with ClickOnce.

Upvotes: 3

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