Member Avatar for TomB1988

Hi,

I have been set a task that takes data from an SQL server and displays it to a 'Wallboard' (a large plasma screen on the wall). I'm just wondering what everyone thinks the best solution would be? Web-based, windowns form based etc.

Another quick question, upon loading Visual Studio 2005 in this office I am prompted with only six 'Business Intelligence Projects' as Templates. None of the more common templates are present. Is there an easy way to retrieve these for use?

Cheers.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by serkan sendur

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A few practical points to help decide the approach and get a working wallboard quickly.

Choice and tradeoffs: pick the platform that matches deployment and update needs. A web app (hosted on IIS) gives centralized updates and easy remote management; use a browser in kiosk mode and push updates (WebSockets/SignalR) when you need near‑real‑time. A local client (WinForms or WPF) gives tighter control of full‑screen rendering and offline resilience. For a highly animated, GPU‑accelerated dashboard prefer WPF; for a simple, fast-to-build display WinForms is fine. This ties into comments from and : local apps let you control chrome and painting, while richer UIs benefit from newer UI stacks.

Architecture and ops: avoid letting each display query SQL directly. Introduce a small middle tier or Windows Service to aggregate, cache, and push data to clients. Use stored procedures and proper indexing to keep DB load low. Choose refresh cadence by importance (5–30s typical); increase if queries are heavy. Operational checklist: run the display as a kiosk account, disable screensaver/power save, set auto‑restart/watchdog, capture logs, and monitor CPU/GPU. For WinForms enable double buffering to remove flicker; in WPF keep visuals simple and let the GPU do the work.

Visual Studio templates: , if you only see BI templates you may be in SQL Server's BIDS shell or have a corrupted VS install. From a Visual Studio Command Prompt try:

devenv /setup
devenv /installvstemplates

If that fails, repair or reinstall the full Visual Studio edition (Express editions are limited).

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Member Avatar for sknake

Use a windows form application -- you have more control over the screen painting so you can hide the application borders.

As for the BI projects I have no idea, you need to elaborate.

Member Avatar for serkan sendur

i think asp.net application has much better user interface than standart windows form. probably Scott hasnt started to work with WPF yet, he must have understood the need to create something which will give you the rich user interface like web applications are.
if you have IIS server, go with asp.net web form.

Edited by serkan sendur because: n/a
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