I'm just getting into Strataframe... I've been working through a lot of the tutorials and I'm looking at the Messaging tutorial. Could someone explain the benefits of the messaging component a little more? It looks cool!

A walkthrough on using SQL would be helpful also, I've been messing around with it all afternoon without much success. Seems much better than using the XML.



In particular, areas I could use how-to advice:

1. Database Deployment -

Where should messaging tables be built? (Yes, I found an option to include them in my development DB, it added MessageItems and MessageLanguages. Is this the correct approach?)

How do I go about deploying them? Seperate Deployment data tasks for each?

If So - Suggestion for future: Allow a single check box to deploy the language info w/ the language tables, as part of the task to add the message tables



2. Message Entry/Creation

So Ok, now I have a DB with the tables in it - How do I fill them in?

Open the Message Editor, how do I get it to use my "new" tables / database? If I create a "New" project, it only seems to accept an file path (Would expect option(s) for an existing DB to use). If I switch the Database Location to my app DB, it fails in trying to use the "Common Repository"



3. What needs to be done to get the forms to work?

Sure, I can fill in the

MicroFour.StrataFrame.UI.Localization.MessageKeyType = MicroFour.StrataFrame.Messaging.MessageKeyDataType.SqlServer;

MicroFour.StrataFrame.UI.Localization.MessageDataSourceKey = "MyDataSourceKey";

But this seems to be way too late, now I can't set the localization keys within the UI. And doing them all by hand would quickly take this out of the usable category. I did look for a "Localization Database", didn't really find a "localization settings object" or anything really like that. The StrataFrame Project Prefs does allow specification of a Project, but doesn't seem to pick up the XML info, only reads values within the project. I had tried using the "Common Repository", but they don't show up within the search in trying to assign them to a control - Is this by design? The values ARE present in the XML, but the drilldown from localizationkey doesn't seem to be using the XML info, rather just the "local" project info...



Messaging & Localization area in the Help (Within UI Layer) doesn't seem to have much information as to what needs to be set up (From a developer level, at least) to get the project to use a data store within a database.



So just really confused, I guess, hoping for some kind of guidance.

1) The messaging tables can be added to any database that is deployed with your application.  As for including the data with the localization tables, there is a new wizard in 1.5 that will create the deployment data packages (and add the localization tables) for both the localization and security.

2) You will not need to "point" your project to your DDT profile becase the DDT profile will contain the deployment data packages to gather the messages when a new package is created for the DDT.

3) When you set the solution preferences to point to a specific project, the localization type editors will search within the project for a key matching the key and/or value you specify.  Once the "LocalizationKey" property is set on a control, the control will retrieve the appropriate value at runtime for localization by searching with the localization store for the text value matching the key that is set as the LocalizationKey property.