title: Moving large vb6 app to web or winforms. You decide!
body: <p>I'm working on porting a large vb6 application to .NET. The current app is a desktop app that communicates with a set of local access databases. There are about 200 forms in the application and about 100 tables. The screens are mostly complex. Most show master-detail relationships, lots of rows in embedded spreadsheet and dynamically generated editing controls. </p>
  
  <p>They will port it to .NET. I'm not sure if they will want it web-based or winforms. To me, it seems that the application is better suited for winforms. Thankfully, the access databases will be replaced with sql server regardless of choice.</p>
  
  <p>My reasons for winforms:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Richer UI. </li>
  <li>Client caching</li>
  <li>Faster development. Winforms is productive for me even though ASP.NET is light years more productive than classic ASP. I would still rather work in winforms.</li>
  <li>Can display more data and spend less time concerned with managing state.</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>I plan to breakout the business/data layer into a seperate library. The business objects in the library will be able to be used either by the winforms or web app. </p>
  
  <p>I'm thinking that if we port to winforms first and have a clean seperation of UI and business logic, I will be able to reuse the business logic in a web version at a later date. Given the business/data layer is in a seperate library with no UI dependencies.</p>
  
  <p>In the end, it's not my decision to make but I would like to hear your experience moving large windows apps to asp.net. </p>
  
  <p>What was your experience moving a large desktop app to asp.net? How would you approach a project like this? Would you rather port this app to winforms or asp.net? Why?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!
  Steve</p>