How to successfully self-host a ASP.NET MVC app or OData service for a workstation app?

Question

Is it possible to self-host an ASP.NET MVC application and/or OData service in a stand-alone workstation app? Are there any successful examples of doing this?

I would like to create a suite of data-centric applications using .NET that are targeted to EITHER a solo/home user OR a team. Unfortunately, I am the only developer. Comparing front-end technologies of WinForms, WPF, and ASP.NET MVC, I am most proficient with ASP.NET MVC. I would also not like to write multiple implementations of my data service.

Answer 1

(Commenting in lieu of voting down as my profile cannot yet vote down.)

You really need to do some research here. Almost any service-oriented .NET technology can be self-hosted... WCF web services, OData, etc. Your bigger concern should be performance. The more layers you add to your app, and the more times you transform or "serve" your data, the more cycles will be spent processing your data. What you may find is that you users become less happy with the performance compared to a snappy compiled UI hitting a simple business or data layer.

In short, yes, this is possible. However, I would save this type of app for one-off / in-a-pinch apps with either a short life expectancy or very minimal client usage (settings panel, etc.).