DISCLAIMER: This post is not about bashing SF that doesn't have WPF support right out of the box, but to see how we can leverage SF's power in developing 3-tier WPF apps.



Looking at several companies who are actively developing controls for VS2008 (Orcase) WPF and silverlight, I want to start looking into developing apps that Uses WPF UIs.



SF, has several great parts Business Objects, BO mapper, validations & business rules, Security, UI controls, Database Deployment, 3-tier SE and etc.

Now what parts of SF can we use to work with WPF?

a) Business Objects (for sure)

b) Server Enterprise (a must for me)

c) Validation and rules (can this be done if SF doesn't have hooks to the UI controls)

d) RBS (I'd love to, but can we use it)

e) BO Mapper (a must to create the DAL)

f) DDT (for sure)



I'd love to hear opinions of those who have experience in SF and also thinking about te new wave!



Thank you all!


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I'll be interested to see what others say, but....kerist, I'm just learning .NET...now I gotta start learning the next iteration....AAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Read this



And this



Overview



And all this stuff are coming at us, faster than you can blink your eye;

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I also am very interested to hear how/when SF will start to support Orcas (especially LINQ). We are already developing against it for future products (in-house) without using SF, though I see customer work for us remaining in 2.0 for a while. Naturally we want to stick with SF and am interested to hear the time line and ideas how SF will integrate.



/wave




Keith Chisarik

PS - I totally agree that the speed with which they (MS) are putting this stuff out is making my head spin. I am not a full time app developer, I have to dabble in network support, CISCO, and some other stuff to pay the bills so it is hard to stay afloat, much less ahead of the MS development machine timeline.





Keith Chisarik

Sigma Data Systems

As I had said in another thread, I've looking at LINQ lately and SF is way ahead of the LINQ game when it comes to features. There is a ton of stuff in SF that don't exist in LINQ. Once SF has the query part of the LINQ integrated, SF will be much more than what LINQ has to offer.

Based on my observation from the training and talking to Trent and Ben, I'm confident they'll do the right job!



What I want to do meanwhile, is to use the existing SF pipeline to hookup to WPF UI layer. Silverlight currently does not have data binding support yet, but WPF does.



So, I'm just trying to brainstorm with other candidates to see what areas we need to watch for?

So, who is jumping in the water????

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To get your head spin more download this file and read.

Acropolis


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I must be confused then, I thought LINQ WAS the query part (which is what I want) of Orcas release, what else does it (LINQ) do that SF is ahead of? Perhaps I am missing something I don't want too....



It seems to me like LINQ with the GUI data designer and the ability to create classes from data is very much like the BO mapper, this is where I wonder how it will integrate.

Keith Chisarik

But this thread wasnt about Orcas/LINQ at all, was it. My bad.



I sorta of planned to Skip WPF, I went to a MS event on it and it seemed like if you didn't need to do very complex "pretty" front ends, WPF didn't offer that much.

Keith Chisarik

LINQ "IS" the Language INtegrated Query and it's an extension language added to the .Net to be able to query any IEnumarable collection. That part is a great welcome, but it only IS a part of the whole picture of using Database from OO point of view.



First, you need an ORM to create your DAL layer to map each field of database to a property, you then need to be able to talk to database for reading/writing/updating/deleting records and many more functions that go with.



Secondly, you then need your business layer to put many business logic, including validation, security and etc.



and thirdly having UI controls to connect to the that.



Looking at LINQ offering, yes they do have the DAL part to map the database to properties using SQLMETAL.EXE or the visual designer, but beyond that, you have to use LINQ to do your own business layer, adding record..., and calling SProcs to add/update/delete records.



SF, as a "Framework" has lots of these already taken care. Once they incorporate the LINQ as their query language, the whole SF package still will be ahead of what MS has to offer.



I hope this short sentence gives an idea!

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