new application development

Question

Hello,
I am going to begin developing a workflow type of system and I would like to get some thoughts from the community.
I would like to create a database application that will track a product to various points throughout a plant. There will be less than 10 workstations, one or two at each point within the plant. Every time a product passes through a location, the person at that station will update the database with data about the product.
There is typically no more than one weeks worth of data that will need to be stored at one time, so I think MS Access would be a sufficient database backend.
I initially thought I would use C# and ASP .net to create a web interface to connect to the back end and display the data needed. After thinking about this further, I think just using a C# windows application would be the better approach. I will have to have near real time displays of where a product is at different points, and I didn't think a web based application would be the best approach.
I was just hoping someone could provide some thoughts supporting either or option, or offer a totally different method of doing this.
Thank in advance for any input.

Scott Lysle · Answer

It might not be an issue but you might want to consider and factor in the status of the workstations you are targeting when making your win forms versus browser based interface decision.  How old are the machines, what OS version are they running, how much memory do they have, what kind of processors, if you are writing a 2005/.NET 2.0 application, do these machines already have .NET 2.0 installed?  If not, can they effectively handle the framework and the application (win forms version).  Figuring these things out might help you decide whether or not you want to field it as a win forms application or make it browser based.
With only 10 machines to contend with, pushing out updates is not going to be a major undertaking but if the number of machines is likely to grow you might want to consider all of your deployment options and the pros and cons of each.
As for the suitability of Access as a database; you mentioned that you only need to retain a weeks worth of data.  If that changes, the suitability of Access may also change.  Access is better than it used to be; it can handle stored procs following the 2000 release but it is still not really an enterprise database solution and it has limits to the amount of data that it can retain and it has other limitations (e.g., no output parameters, no temporary tables,...).  Whether or not it is suitable depends on how you expect to work with it on your backend.