title: Is it possible to use Katana to host an existing WebForms application within a WinForms application?
body: <p>Recently I have read a lot about <a href="http://www.asp.net/vnext/overview/owin-and-katana" rel="nofollow noreferrer">OWIN and Katana</a> and also tried examples like "<a href="http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/hosting-aspnet-web-api/use-owin-to-self-host-web-api" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Use OWIN to Self-Host ASP.NET Web API</a>".</p>
  
  <p>I am currently rather clueless about whether it is possible to use these technologies to host an existing WebForms ASP.NET application without any IIS, completely within a desktop application (WinForms or Console).</p>
  
  <p>I.e. this is what I have:</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/lok6J.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
  
  <p><em>(An existing web application, accessed by users through a web browser over the Internet)</em></p>
  
  <p>And this is what I want to achieve:</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/w2QJh.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
  
  <p><em>(The same existing web application files, hosted locally inside a Katana process and accessed through a webbrowser through a localhost URL)</em></p>
  
  <p>This would be helpful to ship two versions (web and Windows) of our application with rather few effort.</p>
  
  <p><strong>My question:</strong></p>
  
  <p>Is it possible today or in the near future to create such a scenario?</p>