By definition a FRAMEWORK is something that you build ONTO.

DNN is a FRAMEWORK - it acts as the foundation that people build onto.

The reason for the lack of commentary on integration is that for the most part the answer is going to always be the same.

Intergration of DNN with other applications will always be fraught with problems
 - UNLESS you are willing to change the mindset and FRAMEWORK of your application to use DNN's.

One of the key reasons for this is that DNN has only ONE aspx page - and that page is ALWAYS called
for every refresh of the screen.

Most generic aspx applications on the other hand are made up of many different aspx pages all called as needed
 ... so as such DNN represents an entirely different way of creating a web application.

The same will ironically go for just about ANY live database driven CMS system you look at.

Bottom line - when building pretty much anything - from a house to a website - is you can only
really have one framework.

And if you want to make use of DNN - well then DNN needs to be that framework -  it cant really work any other way.

Westa

Thanks Westa,

I believe there is still significant merit in having the two side by side with a communication layer in between. Extending your own fw to benefit from the functionality of another is a beneficial concept.

Building on top of dnn from the beginning sounds great - but reworking your app to retro fit into dnn looks like a massive undertaking considering the applications size.

I recently migrated an application that I worked on over the past 8 years. It was 50% classic asp and 50% asp.net 1.1.

The ironic thing is that for now the classic asp is running in IFrames due to time constraints and budget and the fact that it was mostly just pages that displayed data like reports. I had hoped to recycle a lot of the ASP.1.1 code but discovered that in order to benefit from all the features that DotNetNuke provides I had to rewrite all the code from scratch.

For example, the DAL+ allows you to save a lot of code. It took just as long to try to wire the existing DAL into the new code as it would to rewrite the code to use the DAL+.

Navigating from one control (page) to the next also requires a re-write. I have tons of links where only an administrator is suppose to see the link. Yes I could continue to use the member management from the existing application but what is the point of that?

The massive saving was that once I used the DotNetNuke management I now had granular roles management and I did not have to convert any of the user management from the old application. This is usually a big portion of any application.

Now that the application is converted, all the new functionality will take minimal code. Usually I buy a module and then make the alterations I need.