Hey Folks, I am looking for some advice to transform or create new desktop application for already existed windows desktop application which uses Visual Basic, MSAccess as tech stacks and developed almost 2 decades ago. I need to design a feasible solution for that and the main task of this desktop application is document processing like scanning, digital signature, print, mark or write on document etc Project stake holder desired to develop new desktop application using

.NET Core, SQL Server etc

My recommendations for multi-platform GUI based desktop applications tech stacks is

Electron, LocalStorage or any light sql based database

While i have also heard about desktop applications developed using 

python

 and 

java

 as well. Although i am not familiar to design solutions using java or python but any hints will be appreciated most. May be some of you guys gone through this scenario. We are open to use any tech stacks. Any ideas on the best way to do this? Great Thanks! for your precious time

Electron is going to be the easiest option

Unless there’s something specific that you need or you need to access the underlying OS specific APIs, I’d suggest you to create a PWA and hook it up to an API. You can use IndexedDB for persistent and large volume of storage. This makes your app available everywhere.

My current setup is a PWA + JSONAPI + Orbitjs. Not super common but enables really snappy applications that work offline/online. Sounds like you might need electron for the document scanning stuff although I'm not sure

Great Thanks @thdxr, @Ashishkumar Pandey. I have some quick questions • PWA using Electron or using Angular/React • Could i use DB inside Electron App? • I also heard about QT or PyQT Environment. Any Idea about that? • Could we create an installer for PWA, based on OS platform? Once again Great Thanks and I appreciate it!

A PWA is just a normal web application that you can "install". Good PWAs can run offline and save state to indexeddb. Orbitjs makes this really easy. An electron app is similar to a PWA but is distributed as a standalone application (like Slack). They also have access to non-browser APIs to interact with the underlying os (like file system access) With either of these options you can bring your own web framework (angular, react, or my new favorite SolidJS)

PWA using React - sst has a StaticSite construct for the same. Yes, you can use a db inside electron, some good options are realm, sqlite, pouchdb. If your use is not complicated, IndexedDB (part of Chrome) can also be used. QT was great but it’s a good amount of work last time I tried it. PWAs are web apps that run in a sandboxed version of the default browser. You can’t create an installer per se but if someone visits your PWA on the web, you can prompt them to install it. Create React App has good defaults and can be deployed as a PWA with minimal config out of the box.

Great Thanks! 🙏 Guys for providing me such a great insights

VueJs also a good option for PWAs

also putting my money in to focus on electron or progressive web app that offers offline stuff. main reason being that it makes it easy to update and maintain your app over time without requiring users to update their app. PWA = web, easy. electron, like react native, has "over-the-air" updates. android/ios/flutter native apps just can't do that yet.

Thanks Ross and Dennis, It will definitely help us to come on any conclusion or solution.