Windows applications are run on the user’s computer. Programs like Microsoft Word, Excel, and Power Point are Windows applications. They typically have more complex user interface requirements and therefore are usually more expensive than Internet applications.
Windows applications may use, but don’t require, Internet access.They may be designed to run totally alone, or may share information over a local area network. Typically, they do their own data processing, thus requiring less network bandwidth and server resources.
Windows Forms (WinForms) is the name given to the graphical application programming interface (API) included as a part of Microsoft .NET Framework, providing access to native Microsoft Windows interface elements by wrapping the extant Windows API in managed code. While it is seen as a replacement for the earlier and more complex C++ based Microsoft Foundation Class Library, it does not offer a paradigm comparable to Model–View–Controller. Some after-market and third party libraries have been created to provide this functionality. The most widely used of these is the User Interface Process Application Block, which is released by the Microsoft patterns & practices
WINDOWS FORMS
ADVANTAGES OF WINDOWS APPLICATION
Windows applications are very effective when:
Users may not have access to the Internet.
Processing needs to be done on the client to reduce required bandwidth.
The user interface is complex and needs controls that are not available with Internet Explorer or one of the other Internet browsers.
A large number of concurrent users would drive up the cost of network resources and web servers.
Higher performance is needed (e.g. faster response to user commands).
HISTORY AND FUTURE OF WINDOWS APPLICATION
Just like Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT), the equivalent Java API, Windows Forms was an early and easy way to provide graphical user interface components to the .NET Framework. Windows Forms is built on the extant Windows API and some controls merely wrap underlying Windows components.Windows Forms provides a cross-platform way to design graphical user interfaces. However WinForms is mainly a wrapper around the Windows API, and some of the methods allow direct access to Win32 callbacks, which are not available in other platforms than Windows.
SOME WINDOWS APPLICATION
A software application, or program, is a set of logical conditions grouped together to perform some function. Typically a Microsoft Windows application will be run within a "window" although that is not a requirement. A "window" in the context of software is an area of the screen set aside to run a single program and may or may not have options for controlling the position and size of the program area.
Some examples of Microsoft Windows applications are:
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Notepad
Mozilla Firefox
REAL TIME WINDOWS APPLICATION
Today we have many ways to communicate with our peers, customers, support network, family, and friends. E-mail has become a pervasive mechanism to communicate, but is not quite real time. The telephone is tried and true, but has limitations, such as being voice only—and it lacks a mechanism to know whether or not the other party is present to receive your call.
Real-Time Communications (RTC) offers rich communications and collaboration features combined with presence information, enabling you to know when and where a contact can be found. Many of the features of RTC exist in another form or application, but have never been pulled together in a single implementation to enable and compliment each other.
NEED FOR REAL-TIME WINDOWS
While Windows provides a rich graphical environment for a sophisticated industrial automation programmable logic controller (PLC), it does not ensure that the control application developed for the PLC will have the ability to run at the necessary priority in the Windows environment.
Windows has 32 levels of priority, of which 7 levels are accessible by Win32 API macros. The device in the Windows system with the highest priority is the mouse. So, imagine that a PLC is running a critical control application and the mouse is moved. Windows will immediately stop processing the control application to service the mouse interrupt.
In designing a Windows-based system to ensure that control, determinism and survivability goals are attained and control of system resources is absolute, the designer should consider the capabilities when selecting Windows real-time extensions.