Java - browse server side web pages locally (like Visual Studio)?

Question

I have been tasked with creating an application for a company to store current customers, assign agents to them and work out distances between prospective customers and current customers, for use at trade shows when a new company comes to us to place an order. I have started on this already, but ensuring components do not overlap is boring and kinda tedious.

I would like to write it as a web application, since I am getting really good at .net (VB). However the application is required to work offline. This means the company must install Visual Web Developer or Visual Studio in order to run the application. The company does not what to have to do this and to have to start VWD / VS every time they want to run the application.

So my plan is to make a Java app which creates an "internal server" (such as the one created when you run an app from VWD / VS) and then loads a locally stored VB.Net page in a web browser. The reason for this is that the browser does all the laying out for me, and I am good at data-oriented websites with .net in any case.

Can anyone tell me how to set up the server or point me to a good resource / tutorial to teach me how to do this?

Answer 1

You don't need Visual Web Developer or Visual Studio to run the application. The web server that Visual Studio uses for debugging is called Cassini, but you don't need that to run the production version of your application. What you want to do is actually host your ASP.NET application in Internet Information Services (IIS) right on your Windows machine.

You can read through some resources on setting this up in IIS 7 on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178477.aspx. Or, if you're using an older version of Windows / IIS, there is a good tutorial on IIS 5/6 here: http://www.beansoftware.com/ASP.NET-Tutorials/Set-Up-IIS-ASP.NET.aspx