Architecture Terminal Service OR Web Based?

[amitCG]

Hi Gurus..

Can someone help me out....

I need a performance comparison between a Web Based approach and Terminal Services (Application Mode) approach. Basically I have to compare the speed and scalability of these thin client technologies.



Thanks

[lord loh]

What really do you need it for ?
some sort of a telnet login? or some bank ware ?

And who are the users ?
Developers or A/C office executives ?

WEB Based one needs much processing and you will have a headache to generate proper html and cross browser compatibility!

Terminal based ones are simple and only source code to maintain compared to source and html on web based!

[amitCG]

Thanks,

The application is a inventory mgmt system. The users would use the system to update/add/delete stocks and other details. The application could be built on a 3-tier architecture (using ASP.NET). But since VB.NET Windows forms give richer UI capabilities, i have considered the option of VB.NET Windows forms (as thick client) also open. But there is always the maintenance hassle with thick clients. So the next step was to consider a Terminal Service based architecture, where the VB.NET Windows forms application would reside on the server, and the users would access it thru TS client.

But in that case, what would happen to the performance of the application? Would it be the same or better than the first approach (ASP.NET web based)?

I have read that the amount of data over the network(LAN) for TS client would be very high. Is this true?


Thanks

[Satishpp]

There are lots of considerations here..

For one, a web application would have to maintain state which could be a resource intensive process, depending on the design of your appliation.

A thick client VB.net application deoe not have to maitain state, but at the same time, in case of TS, multiple copies of the application will be run in the server's memory and the screens would be relayed to the clients. This puts a lot of load on the server. So, depending on the number of clients expected, the TS server would need to have large amount of RAM and processing power.

Further, how will the clients be accessing the application? Are they on an intranet or is it via the internet? TS clients can be painfully slow across the internet.

Hope some of the info is useful...
Satish

[lord loh]

A web based or form based one will certainly take less server resources but it means a lot of codes to maintain...The back end & front end...

to Satish:If the server is to be overloaded by TS, then why was telnet/shell based consoled developed ? There must be a reason to overlook the resource hungry aspect of TS ?(I dont' know! Tell me if you do).

[mwilliamson]

have you considered just writing code to automatically update your application? It will certainly be easier than the web-based solution.