Architecture advice needed for upgrading a classic .ASP web app
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Hi All, I have a 10 year old classic .asp app which is a multi tennant SaaS. Running on IIS 7.0 with MS SQL Server back end. When I started this site / app in 2003 it was somewhat ahead of its time for the industry it was serving and had limited success partially because of some reluctance for companies to run their business entirely on the web. However, I was able to grab a decsnt amount of customers (who still use and love it) but ultimately this business fell to a "part-time" effort for me while I took a full time job in IT management. Over the years I have maintained the original customer base but have not put any effort into building new business. It's time for 2.0...lol as 10 years is a long time for 1.x on a classic .ASP platform My current customers just will not go away, and I sense that I could grab a bunch more if I modernized this app. I am looking to modernize the UI, increase performance and allow for easy integration with third party APIs for QuickBooks, etc. as well as possibly extend to mobile apps for iPhone / Android. The site is a transactional inventory data app where the main tables get between 75-100K records per month with a few hundred users. It currently contains about 125 .asp pages. It is multi-tennant and all customer-specific variability is managed via database configuration and some conditional coding based on session variables set by config data in the DB. The functionality is mostly basic data entry, html grids and querying / reporting and exporting data sets to excel. We use Crystal Reports XI for some reporting,charting etc. I do have a need for more robust label printing (currently using Crystal Reports) have worked with 'Nice Label' on other projects but would be looking for options here. I have started looking at MVC vs. .Net forms but would consider anything which will be supportable for the next 5 years. I have done some .Net but skills are stale however I do know .asp / vb and java script and SQL well and have been maintaining this app myself for the few years. Would like to be able to learn and be able to do some design/coding/maintenance myself once the framework is in place. so any platfroms which might lend themselves to my cirrent environment would be great. I like the looks that can be accomplished with HTML5. I recently subscribed to quickbooks online and love the look and functionality of that site which is based on HTML5, Javascript, DoJo. See link to the slide deck link at bottom which describes what technology I
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Hi All, I have a 10 year old classic .asp app which is a multi tennant SaaS. Running on IIS 7.0 with MS SQL Server back end. When I started this site / app in 2003 it was somewhat ahead of its time for the industry it was serving and had limited success partially because of some reluctance for companies to run their business entirely on the web. However, I was able to grab a decsnt amount of customers (who still use and love it) but ultimately this business fell to a "part-time" effort for me while I took a full time job in IT management. Over the years I have maintained the original customer base but have not put any effort into building new business. It's time for 2.0...lol as 10 years is a long time for 1.x on a classic .ASP platform My current customers just will not go away, and I sense that I could grab a bunch more if I modernized this app. I am looking to modernize the UI, increase performance and allow for easy integration with third party APIs for QuickBooks, etc. as well as possibly extend to mobile apps for iPhone / Android. The site is a transactional inventory data app where the main tables get between 75-100K records per month with a few hundred users. It currently contains about 125 .asp pages. It is multi-tennant and all customer-specific variability is managed via database configuration and some conditional coding based on session variables set by config data in the DB. The functionality is mostly basic data entry, html grids and querying / reporting and exporting data sets to excel. We use Crystal Reports XI for some reporting,charting etc. I do have a need for more robust label printing (currently using Crystal Reports) have worked with 'Nice Label' on other projects but would be looking for options here. I have started looking at MVC vs. .Net forms but would consider anything which will be supportable for the next 5 years. I have done some .Net but skills are stale however I do know .asp / vb and java script and SQL well and have been maintaining this app myself for the few years. Would like to be able to learn and be able to do some design/coding/maintenance myself once the framework is in place. so any platfroms which might lend themselves to my cirrent environment would be great. I like the looks that can be accomplished with HTML5. I recently subscribed to quickbooks online and love the look and functionality of that site which is based on HTML5, Javascript, DoJo. See link to the slide deck link at bottom which describes what technology I
Hi mham, yes running an application on old technologies will not only degrade the application performance also your application cannot compete with new technologies. As long as your clients are happy, you will be happy, but once they ask you with latest technology. Yes, you need to do that. You are on the right track for developing with right tools like MVC. Or else you can do one more thing like have two different layers like client and server and write a web service separately where you will have all db related logic. Its like a Client Server architecture. So if you develop a separate service. later you can use the same service in your android, iOS or windows or some other service. So it becomes like a "Write once and Use else where". If you have a large data sets which will degrade the application performance, there are many alternative ways that you can do in order to increase the performance of application with less effort. One good thing is Paging or Data virtualization. Using AJAX based controls, queries and now a days there are lot of java script frameworks available and can choose any one of them to implement the best for your needs. Well, I don't know MVC so I can't help on it, but if you asked me on how to do with classic ASP.Net with Sql Server and WCF service then I can help you.
Regards, Ganesh