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Forms Auth\Windows Auth – what is more common?

I was talking to some coworkers today about the scenarios for Forms Auth and Windows Auth in line of business applications.    We were having a debate about which was more common.

As you might guess at Microsoft we are an all windows shop, so just about all our line of business applications use Windows auth, and I gotta say it is pretty nice not to have to remember a bunch of user names and passwords.  

But I wonder if that is so common across the industry.. and even for companies that do use Windows Auth, I imagine there are scenarios where Forms auth is still important. 

One place this manifests itself is in the project templates  for things like ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET WebForms, Silverlight, etc.  Should we be wiring these up to support Forms Auth by default (with a log in\register controls) or Windows Auth where those are not needed?

Here is a little forms auth example… 

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What do you think?  What is more common in your experience Forms auth or Windows Auth?

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More Stories By Brad Abrams

Brad Abrams is currently the Group Program Manager for the UI Framework and Services team at Microsoft which is responsible for delivering the developer platform that spans both client and web based applications, as well as the common services that are available to all applications. Specific technologies owned by this team include ASP.NET, Atlas and Windows Forms. He was a founding member of both the Common Language Runtime, and .NET Framework teams.

Brad has been designing parts of the .NET Framework since 1998 when he started his framework design career building the BCL (Base Class Library) that ships as a core part of the .NET Framework. He was also the lead editor on the Common Language Specification (CLS), the .NET Framework Design Guidelines, the libraries in the ECMA\ISO CLI Standard, and has been deeply involved with the WinFX and Windows Vista efforts from their beginning.

He co-authored Programming in the .NET Environment, and was editor on .NET Framework Standard Library Annotated Reference Vol 1 and Vol 2 and the Framework Design Guidelines.