What is the Client/Server Equivalent for ASP.NET MVC

Question

I used to build a website on ASP.NET MVC. Now I want to build another web service. This time, I want to use a client application (running on Windows) and no web pages are needed. What technology should I choose? I am still using C# on both server- and client-side, and I might use mySQL. Thank you very much.

Answer 1

I would strongly suggest WPF for client side. It has a similar MVC architecture and uses XAML for UI which is simple to learn but very powerful. Server can be a service if no gui is needed.

Answer 2

You could use a classic 3-tiers architecture:

• UI client application in WPF (which provides the nice MVVM pattern for UI/Logic separation)
• WCF webservices for the backoffice, IIS hosting (C# assemblies)
• Entity Framework as an ORM

Answer 3

It is ASP.NET Web API , which is new in ASP.NET MVC 4 ^<1> .

_{ASP.NET MVC 4 is under RC by the time of writing.}