Visual WebGui Case Studies

"By using Visual WebGui we saved a significant amount of development time… Turning to Visual WebGui made it possible to create a rich user interface for both the web and desktop environments."

Overview
ARC-GREENLAB GmbH develops and markets specialized applications based on ArcGIS ® technology in the fields of cadastral survey, municipal and forestry with a customer list that includes municipalities, government agencies and state offices along with companies in the supply and disposal, construction, telecommunications, transportation, planning and engineering industries.

The company developed a centralized database application with GIS components for the forestry industry and the Chamber of Agriculture of Lower Saxony, Germany. The gl-forest application is a database application with interfaces to the Geographical Information System ArcGIS Server from ESRI and its target audience in the forestry industry includes forest managers and woodman working in the field.

Business needs
ARC GREENLAB's former solution was based on Microsoft Access 97 and lacked secure technical future prospects. Therefore, the new application should solve that security and usability issues.

The main goal then was to create a web-based solution with a centralized database and access, in order to provide forestry development and management customers with access to the application from anywhere with a web access. Enabling web access to their solution was a main requirement, but not the only one.

The new solution must also allow fast and reliable UI over the web and to present users with desktop-like usability that includes the complete functionality in all environments. Functions such as editing and acquisition of forestall planning data, generating reports, planning and calculating forestry business data needed to be provided by the gl-forest application with a reliable, fast, easy-to-use and secure software solution.

The Solution
The first attempt to develop the new gl-forest applications was made with standard ASP.NET-controls unsuccessfully. It did not take too long before the team realized that the ASP.NET development was too time-consuming while not very sophisticated on the front-end.

The team was able to design the user interface with a sophisticated look and feel after turning to Visual WebGui. The work within Microsoft Visual Studio and the WinForms-like designer significantly reduced the overall development time. On top of the cut in development time, the team successfully created a desktop-like UI with the complete functionality that was originally required.

In addition, the deployment process that was required to be on different web servers was simple and effective, even more than expected.

Benefits
"By using Visual WebGui we saved a significant amount of development time." Said Martin Krausmann. Visual WebGui saved the gl-forest development team valuable time with its integration into Microsoft Visual Studio, the intuitive development methods and the inhabited security.

"Turning to Visual WebGui made it possible to create a rich user interface for both the web and desktop environments." Added Martin Krausmann. Visual WebGui enabled the development of the exact application's UI in desktop and web environments and to save additional time due to Visual WebGui's unique capabilities to create desktop and web interfaces from the same code base.

The customer (Chamber of Agriculture, Lower Saxony, Germany) appreciates the fact that the web user interface provided by the Visual WebGui controls handles like a desktop application; as opposed to a normal ASPX-application that would look and feel much more like a normal website.

Screen shots