Tools for Building an OCA (Occasionally Connected Application)

Question

I will be building an in-house, Occasionally Connected App (OCA). What technologies would you suggest I employ.

Here are my parameters:

1. .NET Shop(3.5sp

Answer 1

I wrote an order taking program for wine sales reps. Here is the video. The client software is installed using click-once. That also installs SQL Server Express and loads the database. I used the Microsoft Sync Framework to sync the local database with the one on the server (see the last section of the video.)

• With powerful clients now I don't see any reason to not use SQL Server Express, it is free with a limit of 4GB.

• SQL CE had too many limitations - no stored procs being a major one.

• You will need to use GUIDs everywhere as the primary key - see the new NewSequentialID().

• I love click-once, it is a big time saver.

I'm looking forward to Silverlight, but just haven't had time to look into it. Not sure if I would have done it with Silverlight if doing it now or not.

Having said all this, this is not a project for anyone inexperienced. So I would also get some very experienced help.