Windows Forms library in an ASP code behind

[justin]

Hello, recently I was working on a project where I needed to automate
PDF generation. I found two open source libraries that I liked, but
the best one required the Windows.Forms class to be used in the C#
code-behind. When I tested the library, this worked fine in Visual
Studio 05.

What I was wondering was, are there performance concerns or security
concerns in using the Windows.Forms library in an ASP.NET website?
Will using it impact my scalability? All thoughts are welcomed, thank
you.

 

[bruce barker]

it depends.

asp.net server code can not create actual window.forms controls as these
is no desktop to create a window on. if you control tries to create a
window it will fail, but it may not need to.

a dll used in asp.net should be thread safe, this is not an issue for a
windows application, so you may run into problems here.


-- bruce (sqlwork.com)

 

[justin]

it depends.

asp.net server code can not create actual window.forms controls as these
is no desktop to create a window on. if you control tries to create a
window it will fail, but it may not need to.

a dll used in asp.net should be thread safe, this is not an issue for a
windows application, so you may run into problems here.

-- bruce (sqlwork.com)

Thank you very much for your help.

The API I'm using for PDF creation was meant for Windows.Forms but
doesn't actually create any forms or windows. If I import the
Windows.Forms library in my C# code-behind it works fine. I just
wasn't sure if the functions in the Windows.Forms library scale to the
level needed for a web application. I'm looking at up to 200 users,
but probably no more than 30-40 at peak usage. I would like the
application to be much more scalable however and wasn't sure how
Windows.Forms would impact that.