Windows Forms Application versus Web Application

This table may help you decide what type of application you should build.

 

Windows Forms

ASP.NET Web Application

User Interfaces, data binding etc.

Easy to build

Difficult to build

Deployment and Maintenance

Complex. New versions of assemblies, configuration files, and other required files must be deployed on all client machines. Usually user interaction required.

Easy. Need to deploy assemblies and configuration files on the server only. Transparent to the client.

Performance

Faster

Slower

Robustness and Reliability

One client machine goes down, other users are still live.

Usually web servers are never down. However if the server goes down, all users are affected.

Network Congestion

Depending on the data transfer and connections made to the server from various clients.

Depends

Resources

Runs on the client machine.

Runs on a Web server.

Catastrophic failure

User interaction required.

Usually user interaction not required.

Framework dependency

All client machines have to install required versions of .NET framework and other required libraries.

Only server needs to have .NET framework and other required libraries.

Table 1. Comparison between Windows Forms and ASP.NET Web Applications.

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