bwnetnuke wrote
Hello,
I'm new to the world of windows forms application and I'm in the process of trying to build a windows forms application that will use a SQL Server 2005 DotNetNuke 4.5 database, and I see that Matt mentioned using a windows forms application for his project (see below).
Is it possible to have internal employees login using the same DNN userid/pwd credentials & mechanism with a winform login control? I'm trying to determine if it's possible to bring in all the necessary DNN functionality into my windows app. I assume I somehow need to reference the DNN code files, libraries, classes, etc, etc and I need to follow the same stored procedures to ensure user's & pwd's are created properly, and other things in the db are held in check in terms of referential integrity. I'm using Visual Studio 2005 Pro.
Thanks in advance.
| mr17hz wrote
The primary product is a windows forms application that runs on local computers against a local database; a local server also exposes a web app used by 'kiosk' machines, or users on the public wireless network to handle self manifesting of themselves and others; as well as viewing departure status, etc...
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and from this post:
| mr17hz wrote
however it would be nice to get the users/roles/membership table data out and into my own data schema so that I can come up with a plan that will allow users to temporaraly work on a windows forms application in a senario when their internet connection goes down.
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I took a lot of shortcuts as I'm a single developer working on a project that's taken me over a year of development already; and don't have to worry about explaining my shortcuts to a team. I agree with Michael that web services are indeed the appropriate solution for a long term online only solution. I however, without the existance of the framework that Michael's putting together, only used one single webservice - "AreUserCredentialsCorrect".
All of my membership related integration is read only; that is - users must create accounts, manage their passwords, etc - through DotNetNuke... My application has access to the DotNetNuke database (in fact, my application uses the same database for it's 40 or so tables, using a differennt prefix). It references the dnn_users table but only for a list of usernames! It also uses roles (read only - administration is done on the website) - and is vulterable to database schema changes here because it accesses dnn tables directly.
User Properties are edited on both the website and in my application - and have been considerably extended. my application accesses the tables directly, and i created a dotnetnuke profile provider that gives DotNetNuke access to (only most of ) the properties. I had to create a custom user form because there are certain properties that I wanted to restrict the ability to modify based on more advanced business rules than DNN would allow for.
Another big thing for my application (which is primaraly a reservation manangement application) is that it works if the internet to where the local application is running goes down! it does this by using SQL replication - i designed my tables so that values in rows never change - new rows are added and summaries are always calculated on the spot (i'm using indexed views to make this possible even with hundreds of thousands of rows).. This way I know that concurrency violations won't occur - worst case in a disconnected state is that some overbooking takes place; which is resolved with phonecalls as soon as syncronization occurs.
The best advice I can give you is interact with dotnetnuke as little as possible - don't replicate functionality you dont have to (such as creating users) and concentrate on functionnality you need (such as validating credentials to deturmine if a user can be logged in, and then providing a string array of security groups the user is a member of)... as long as your business requirements allow this; you'll save a ton of time.
I am available for consulting if you get serious and want someone to steer you away from possible integration problems and help create your development roadmap - however i'm not in the position to be taking on any projects by myself for at least until the end of the year.