Application architecture is an important backbone which has often been ignored in the process of developing web applications. For small websites development, with minimal number of modules, not much importance have generally been paid to the architecture framework. We are currently working on a large-scale portal website and we have built it using three-tier architecture.

Platform: ASP.NET 3.5 using C# 
Database: SQL Server 2005

For this project, there are a number of modules and client applications developed:

- Windows client application developed for the warehouse location handling the logistics and inventory portion of the website
- Web client application developed as the front end website where all users can register, login, interact with the website etc.
- Application server  which handles the various transaction modules for the entire application
- Database server running on SQL Server 2005 with Notifcation Service and Reporting Service running and integrated with the various events and controls

We are currently working on the transaction modules, after which we will deploy it onto the application server and perform user-level testing, load testing and scenario-based testing.

This project is one of the most challenging projects that we have worked on, and the adoption of a strong architecture framework made it possible for this project to be near completion at this point. Websites can be developed fairly easily without any planned framework; BUT for websites which are scalable and developed to handle large number of transactions, functionalities and traffic, it is IMPOSSIBLE to do it well without proper planning and sound technical / architecture understanding. This applies especially to portal websites, e-intranets and ecommerce websites for that matter.

The website will be ready for launch in the next 3-4 weeks. No further info can be provided at this stage - look out for it here when we launch it!!