I think you can already guess at the answers to this one - you're
already asking the right questions.
Running a desktop app (whether Access, Excel etc...) on the webserver
worries web server admins -
Off the cuff:
1. There is the internal account issue - the webserver isn't a person -
it runs in a certain web account and uses this account profile to
launch Access - that account needs to have priviledges to run an app,
access data and folders etc... Thinks: Do you do anonymous
authentication or do you do NTLM authentication so that you can run the
app as the person account? Thinks: Have you thought of Remote Terminal
Services or Citrix which are process managed environments?
2. There is the process forking - running an app isn't a "properly
threaded" animal and isn't shared (AFAIK). Meaning every user will fork
off an Access process and so on - this could quite quickly bring down
the server.
3. There is the overhead of interop - .net forking off an unmanaged
desktop app - via automation.
If you have a play web server, you can try what you like but a
production server usually has several "mission critical" production
websites and few server managers would be happy with running desktop
apps as server processes. It's worse than CGI.
bc******@bmghom es.com wrote:
Additional information:
I would be calling the app from code in an asp.net page, or an .ascx or
a .dll.
Bob