Before you can ask the question "should I do WinForms or WebForms", you will want to ask yourself the question "what is the app supposed to do".

C# WinForms by themselves won't give any clear advantage over a VFP WinForm. If you're going against a VFP data store in particular, VFP WinForms definitely have an advantage.

However, if the app is going to get complex with 3-4 tiers, and has a lot of potential clients or room for app updating, doing it in C# in a WebForm or WinForm will probably be easier.

I am going to make a lot of suppositions, see if any of it makes sense for your environment. Your back-end data store is MSSQL. You have 100 desktops to support. You have a 24x7 operation. You need your data to be secure.

Create an unpriviledged set of WinForms with C#. Make each independent form a single .exe (for speed and modularization) that does a specific task. The WinForm caches data locally with VFP DBCs, created on the fly. The WinForms are deployed as "NTD Forms" (No Touch Deployment), meaning there is a single web page that users hit with IE, and after authentication the appropriate forms get pulled down by the client, the local data environment get set, and the user does whatever. The C# WinForm uses the VFP OLEDB driver for local cache data, and when syncs with the central data store need to get done, the WinForm client uses HTTP and datasets.

I think that mixing the right technologies will give you maximum flexibility. In the above example, you won't have to worry about getting new versions of the app to users, because like in a pure ASP scenario, every time a user hits the page they get the latest version. Actually it is better than ASP because the IE user may have played with their cache settings and try to use an older version of the page, but a NTD WinForm can be set to always pull the latest from the web. Also, once each client has the .NET Framework and the VFPOLEDB driver installed, the (unprivileged) client won't have to register ActiveX controls or COM objects in order to get cool treeviews or etc. Using VFP as the local data store means each client is isolated from the back-end DB, and if/when you need data maintenance you can handle it at the server level simply. If you want to lock out all new client connections, just set permissions or move or change the launchin web page.





>Folks,
>
>There is a serious argument if using WinForms: some says, might as well stay with the VFP environment then add Web flavor on it. Also, using winforms would mean just duplicating the current application which sits on Windows platform (ofcourse with different tool) and maybe a little revision on the UI. For now, I just can't see any big difference between WINFORMS and VFP FORMS or do you know of any significant difference?