Visual WebGui Case Studies

"As opposed to ASP.NET with Visual WebGui you don't have to master all the languages and toggle between the different layers… This is really rapid application development so you can focus on your business logic." Joachim Rönn 

Overview
Resulting Services GmbH Switzerland is a Software Developer for more than 15 years. Their core competence includes business administration software to coordinate projects, processes and divisions as well as knowledge based software.

Business needs
A main feature for this business administration software is an integrated meeting management. The product PM4 is an approved tool and is mainly used by teams or complete companies.

Since it is used by teams in different areas and different locations there has been long since a demand for a similar web solution. The primary goal was to develop a web solution with the look and feel of the Windows solution in order to eliminate any special training for the new program.

Furthermore, the application needed to be highly customizable to meet the different needs of customers in different branches. PM4 has to be quick, easy and flexible with an intuitive interface.

The Solution
Initially the web solution was done with “traditional” ASP.NET, later on enhanced with Ajax-Functionality.

The conversion process of PM4 seemed to take longer than expected so the team looked for an alternative. "We were lucky at this stage to find Visual WebGui," said René Heer, CEO of Resulting Services. The team realized that with Visual WebGui Web development can be quite easy as it abstracts away the main complexities and the need to deal with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and of course AJAX and the .NET Framework with C# or VB.Net. "The impression from Visual WebGui was overwhelming, so we decided to re-start from scratch," said the Project Manager Joachim Rönn and added "As opposed to ASP.NET with Visual WebGui you don't have to master all the languages and toggle between the different layers."

The team also found that the web design tasks which take a high percentage of the work in ASP.NET development, is so much easier and so much quicker. "You do it with the same ease and in the same time you would need for a WinForms application. No wonder, as you actually design it like a WinForms application. Sometimes you even forget that are you are building a web application. This is really rapid application development so you can focus on your business logic," said Joachim.

The team was also pleased of the performance it achieved with Visual WebGui. "When you trace the amount of data that is transferred to the client you’ll be amazed. Once the initial load is done the amount of data is incredible low. Therefore the execution speed is quite high."

On top of that the deployment was a suprisingly easy experience for the team as even that proven to work with the same ease as a WinForms application. "Deployment is a breeze once the initial settings in IIS have been done."

Benefits
Productivity was one of the key advantages of Visual WebGui for the team. Its seamless integration within Visual Studio allowed the developers to work in a familiar environment and build their web application in the same productive patterns of WinForms. "If you can design a Windows application you can for sure design a Web application. I haven’t met another framework that does anything like that so easily."

As a result of the amazing productivity allowed with Visual WebGui the development time was about only 25% of the estimated time for a pure ASP.NET application. Since Visual WebGui enabled a similar UI to the original application over the web there was additional savings in user training and adoption efforts.

The Visual WebGui architecture also proved to be very efficient in terms of execution and performance. All the logic stays on the server, only the screen modifications are transferred to the client. Thus, the execution speed is very good and the result is a very steady screen, no postback, no flickering.

Screenshots
Starting screen with current activities.

Report Generator from DevExpress XtraReports - easy to incorporate into VisualWebGui.