The need for this controls (Devexpress Wrapper extensions) is very high.

See the posts in the forum. Many customers ask for you the support plan.

The answer was like taht "you can easily develop". I couldn't understand the answer. If it is so easy, Why do not you develop ? And extend the framework functionality ?

Why do you advice to each of us to develop this type functionality ? The same work have not to be developed many times ?

It is actually very easy to implement native SF data binding to 3rd party controls, but you don't have to.  You can bind to them using the BusinessBindingSouce without having to implement the IBusinessBindable interface at all.  The reason that we have not expanded the DevExpress wrappers or any other 3rd party vender wrappers past the standard classes is that there is very little demand.  Secondly, this requires more resources dedicated from inside of our shop to stay on top of 3rd party versions and controls and ultimately detracts from the growth of the framework.  But we knew that these types of enhancements would be needed by customers in the field, so we have made it as easy as possible to create your base classes, implement our interfaces, and then from that point forward you have the best of both worlds.

The extended framework focus will be towards creating more framework level enhcancements as well as extending the standard StrataFrame control collection.  This doesn't mean, however, that we will cease to support 3rd party control companies such as DevExpress or Infragistics, but we will only create the standard or basic controls in the pre-built wrappers.  Finally, you get the source code for these wrappers so you can see exactly what we have done to extend them.  I hope this helps.

You should have created a base assembly that doesn't inherit from anything other than StrataFrame and other .NET assemblies (in other words none of your application assemblies).  When you do this, you are creating an extension of your own classes and tools that you use.  We have two types of these base assemblies when we develop: company level (used for multiple applications) and application level (used specifically for one application).  In this case, you would want to create this in your company level base assemblies so that you can use them over and over again.  This is actually a topic we cover during our training class.

Ertan, I use Infragistics and don't use DevExpress. However, although there is an Infragistics wrapper, I don't use it. As Trent says you can use the Business Binding Source against any 3rd party control and I would imagine the same is true with DevExpress. If not then this is a problem with DevExpress as the BBS will bind to any control supporting standard .NET data binding. That said I have no doubt DexExpress will bind to the BBS as it wouldn't be worth 2 cents otherwise.

Technically, a BBS will be "slower" than straight binding to the BO, but (for the record) I have many forms containing multiple BBSs bound to Infragistics grids and performance is not an issue. I can recall several forms containing around 10+ Infragistics ultragrids each bound to a BBS and they are not "slow". 

I think the fact that the SF guys have produced wrappers in the past shouldn't be viewed as being the only way of using 3rd party controls - that is definitely not the case. You need look no further than the BBS.

Aaron