>>>>>>>Hi all, I have been asked to write a ( for now ) very basic enquiry app that resides on the web, the users would be required to login to gain access and then enter a stock number to check availability of an item ( I'm sure this will grow horns but for now this is all they want ). I have never written anything for the web and don't know where to start. I don't want to get off on the wrong foot so if anyone can give me any help I would be grateful.
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>>>>>>Internet or Intranet ?
>>>>>>IAC probably the hardest bit will be the login.
>>>>>>Will the login be via a Windows account or will you have to maintain a login system ?
>>>>>>What's the DB for the stock data and where is it stored?
>>>>>
>>>>>Hi Viv, it will be on the internet, the login will have to be managed by me as the users could be anywhere from at the office to an internet cafe, the DB would be Sql Server - thanks
>>>>
>>>>Since it's Internet and you have SQL server then it may well be worth looking at the ASP.NET membership stuff that Mike mentioned: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/yh26yfzy.aspx.
>>>>There's a ready built database for users/roles etc as well as login controls etc. There's a link on that page that will walk you through the whole thing including creating the site from scratch. You might also consider exposing the information via a web-service so that users could access it directly rather than solely through the browser page you provide ?
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>>>Hadn't thought of that ( web-service ) - I suppose if I wrapped all the functionality in a web service I could use it for both a desktop and a web app - or am I being a tad optimistic - don't know anything about web services but will look them up - as I'm sure you've gathered the web is a grey area for me :-)
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>>You could certainly access the web service from a desktop app or whatever. But if you think there may be a need for that you could use WCF rather than a simple web service. IIS would probably still be the best option for hosting the service but you'd be keeping other options open down the line. Docs here:
>>http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms735119(v=VS.90).aspx
>>Don't be too put off by all the options - setting up a basic WCF service on IIS is pretty much as simple as creating an asmx web service.
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>Hi Viv, thanks for your time, I checked out the link for WCF and it doesn't look too complicated but what are the advantages of WCF over a web-service ? thanks again

Flexibility. Although you only want to access this service via IIS at the moment (HTTP binding) a service can have multiple endpoints so you could also, if required, access it over TCP/IP, MSMQ and named pipes using the MS available bindings. A service can also be hosted without IIS - you could, for example, make it accessible from a standalone .NET exe or expose it as a Windows service.
As before, you probably won't want to use any of this immediately but since setting this up as a WCF service rather than a regular web service is not really more difficult then you may has well do so and have a few extra arrows in you quiver for the future...