StrataFrame Forum / StrataFrame Application Framework / Enhancement Requests

Label + TextBox + LookupButton together

hector — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:59:09 GMT

Hi folks,

if i am not wrong, there isn't any SF control which combines a label , a text box and a button.

What i need here is similar to PeopleLookupControl user control in StrataFlix project but very generic one.

I should bind it to a BO and bind it's label to label of BO's field.

When i hit button it will browse related BO. etc etc...

i plan to create such a control.

At this point, i want to ask to all folks whether anyone can address me good example to create such a composite control?

Kind Regards...

Allow renaming of field in BOMapper

Greg McGuffey — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:52:46 GMT

I know this has been discussed before (too lazy at the moment to look it up), but I'd like to make an enhancement suggestion for the BO mapper.

It would be really nice if a field could be renamed in the BOMapper. I recently had a table that had a column named 'TableName' in it. When the partial was built, it blew up, because BusinessLayer already has a property name 'TableName'. In my case I was lucky and used a view to work around it. However, I can see this as a very nice feature to insulate the app from db changes in general.

Provide attribute to indicate the BOMapper should skip a class

Greg McGuffey — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:28:23 GMT

I was just reading [url]http://forum.strataframe.net/FindPost16181.aspx[/url] and remembered I wanted to make an enhancement request. :D

Actually two :P

1. Provide a class attribute to indicate a class inheriting from BusinessLayer is not to be considered by the BO Mapper.
REASON: Just to keep things cleaner. I have a number of base classes, report classes, etc that do not ever need to be handled by the BO mapper. It would be nice if I could mark them as such, so they clutter up the mapper.
2. Provide some way to indicate that a project has no BOs (or more accurately, that the BO mapper should skip it).
REASON: As in the referenced post, it would speed things up a bit and keep things clean. Always weird seeing 10 projects with red Xs and my one BO project.

Neither is a huge deal, but thought I'd get it out there for consideration. Thanks!

More info in Data Collision dialogue box

Peter Jones — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:17:22 GMT

Hi,

A bit of background first:
1) We use DX grids
2) All our grids are always in edit mode, i.e. user can edit, add or delete without changing form 'mode'.
3) As the user moves between different rows in a grid we automatically save that row if it is dirty.

Today a user what hopping between rows looking at things and decided to add a new row (by pressing the add new row button). This caused a data collision dialogue box to appear which showed changed values. The problem is the user had no idea what row he had left (and made dirty) when the add new row button was pressed.

The Data Collision processing was perfectly valid but, in these circumstances, it didn't give the user the full picture. I was wondering if you could add an 'all fields view' button to the dialogue box so the user can see all the fields (changed and unchanged) in the BO. This would give the user the ability to postively identifiy the record the system is refering. In this case it was an Order and, because the Order Number was unchanged, it didn't appear in the field list.

Cheers, Peter

BOM enhancement for custom type fields

Kirk M Sherhart — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 09:03:46 GMT

Hi All

I'm using SF in an Oracle environment, which converts all numeric values returned from the database into a. Net decimal type. Many times I want to use the value as an int, so I set the BOM to use a custom type of "int" which generates the following code...

[codesnippet]return (int)this.CurrentRow["OBJECTID"];[/codesnippet]

which causes a runtime cast violation (i.e. unboxing from a decimal to an int is not allowed.)

If instead, BOM would generate the following...

[codesnippet]return (int)((decimal)this.CurrentRow["OBJECTID"]);[/codesnippet]

all would be well.

I'd like BOM to generated custom type fields using the following template...

[codesnippet]return (custom-type)((native-db-type)this.CurrentRow[fieldName]);[/codesnippet]

Thanks!

Enforce field MaxLength in the BOM by default

Edhy Rijo — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:11:20 GMT

As far as I know there is nothing in SF to automatically enforce the characters entered in a Textbox with respect of the field length value.

An error like this can be easily generated by the end user.

[quote]BusinessLayerException
An error occurred while saving an the data to the server.
DataLayerSavingException
String or binary data would be truncated.[/quote]

I know I can create a lot of broken rules to validate the field Length, but I strongly believe that this should be handle by the Business Object Mapper since it has all the information needed to add this kind of validation to the BO designer file.

Controls w/option to have a default search message

Derek Price — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:10:47 GMT

I really like web sites that have search boxes with the grayed out text message that clears when clicked in. See attached images. It seems that this would be a great feature for the StrataFrame-wrapped controls like the textbox, combobox, etc., especially in BrowseDialogs. This would another little UI feature that would really help the product shine.

Thanks,
Derek

Make the ListView.EditChildRecord method public or shared

Edhy Rijo — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:18:37 GMT

There are situations where the functionality of the EditChildRecord needs to be done programmatically, we need a way to call the EditChildRecord to show the ChildForm from the form where the listview is being used.

ThemedDetailWindow - ItemClick support

Edhy Rijo — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:36:00 GMT

I am working with the ThemedDetailWindow which display 10 items values and a customer suggested if he can click on each item to get a report with data related to the item clicked.

I know that is not supported yet but how acceptable would it be to add the following:

1.- ItemType: Link or Regular
2.- Support for ItemClick event so we can code a reaction.

StrataFlix Sample application

Russell Scott Brown — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 16:03:36 GMT

It would be really helpful if you could do some more work on the sample application. More frequent updates like you do the point releases for Strafaframe.

It doesn't take long to work through the existing sample....

Maintenance Form Toolstrip

Larry Caylor — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:57:21 GMT

I'd like to see the button images exposed as properties so I can configure the control to maintain a consistant look with the rest of my application.

Support for Filters in BO.RestoreCurrentDataTableSnapshot()

Edhy Rijo — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:32:48 GMT

Currently the BO.RestoreCurrentDataTableSnapshot() does not support any filter applied to the BO prior to the snapshot.

I am using a lot the BO.Filter feature and was bitten by this issue until I realized that the BO.filter was not taken into consideration when using the BO.SaveCurrentDataTableToSnapshot().

So due to the meaning of the world "SnapShot", I believe it would be very helpful to also respect the applied filter to the BO at the time of using BO.SaveCurrentDataTableToSnapshot() and when using the BO.RestoreCurrentDataTableSnapshot() that the filter be re-applied.

Thanks!

Retain the existing db connection in a command object

Peter Jones — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:39:22 GMT

Hi,

Just a thought....

I recently had a need to populate just a single BO on a form from a different database to the other BO's on the form. The actual database to use isn't known until runtime.

All our db access is via stored procedures in SQL Commands so, given that I had ready access to connection string I needed to use, I simply created SQL Connection, opened it and then set the SQL Commands .connection property. In tracking down why this didn't work I can see Business Layer creates a connection 'on-the-fly' and ignores what may already be there in the SQL Command object.

I was wondering if it may be useful to check if a SQL Command object already has a connection object defined and use it rather than creating a 'standard connection'. The assumption here being that if a system has gone to the trouble of creating a connection and placing it in the SQL Command object then that's the connection that should be used.

BTW - this is 'just a thought' - I have no need for this functionality as I have achieved the required results by other means.

Cheers, Peter

AutoColumnSort

Geoff Hirst — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:14:55 GMT

Guys,

I just switched out my code for sorting on a listview and used the built in capabilities, and suddenly my form takes 4 years to load as the LV control sorts every item over and over everytime there is an addition. Doh!

So, I switch off autocolumnsoft and zoom, done in 2 seconds. So, I am now doing an order by from my proc, but it orders on the second column of the listview, is there any chance of being able to set the column that the sort is done on when the lv control is first drawn?

thanks

Geoff.

Add BackColor/ForeColor properties to the ListView columns

Edhy Rijo — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:51:00 GMT

I would be really nice to be able to change column colors for the listview.

Reference Columns by name also in the ListView.RowPopulating

Edhy Rijo — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:02:25 GMT

It would be really helpful and safer to be able to reference a column by its name instead of the index in the ListView.RowPopulating event.

Ex Current code:
[code][quote]
Private Sub VendorsBrowseDialog_RowPopulating(ByVal e As MicroFour.StrataFrame.UI.Windows.Forms.RowPopulatingEventArgs) Handles MyBase.RowPopulating
'-- Strong type the passed business object
With CType(e.BusinessObject, CardTrackingSystem.Business.bizVendor)
e.UseGroup = True
e.GroupHeaderText = MicroFour.StrataFrame.Tools.Common.GetEnumDisplayValue(.VendorType)

'-- Show the Inactive Status with a red color
If .IsInactive Then
e.RowForeColor = Drawing.Color.Red
[b] e.Values(4).DisplayValue = "Yes"[/b]
Else
[b] e.Values(4).DisplayValue = String.Empty[/b]
End If
End With
End Sub
[/quote][/code]

Ex Suggested code:
[code][quote]
Private Sub VendorsBrowseDialog_RowPopulating(ByVal e As MicroFour.StrataFrame.UI.Windows.Forms.RowPopulatingEventArgs) Handles MyBase.RowPopulating
'-- Strong type the passed business object
With CType(e.BusinessObject, CardTrackingSystem.Business.bizVendor)
e.UseGroup = True
e.GroupHeaderText = MicroFour.StrataFrame.Tools.Common.GetEnumDisplayValue(.VendorType)

'-- Show the Inactive Status with a red color
If .IsInactive Then
e.RowForeColor = Drawing.Color.Red
[b] e.Values("VendorIsInactive").DisplayValue = "Yes"[/b]
Else
[b] e.Values("VendorIsInactive").DisplayValue = String.Empty[/b]
End If
End With
End Sub
[/quote][/code]

Business Objects and Toolbox tabs

Geoff Hirst — Sun, 24 May 2009 06:53:58 GMT

Guys,

Would it be possible to be able to create any number of VS2008 toolbox tabs and have objects show up in your own tabs? Great example here, is BBS objects. It would be great to be able to have these show up in their own tab. Now I know these objects don't show up in the toolbox, unless you make them, but what would be really great would be to have a tab of their own, then you can collapse it easier, then the list doesn't get too long.

It would be really good if we could control it too, so that when a rebuild is done, the tabs we specified are created with their associated objects. If there are no tabs set up, then it does exactly what it does now throws all objects into a single tab by the name of the BO project.

Does anyone else see value in this?

thanks

Geoff.

PS. on another note, if the above is unreasonable, any chance of a slight modification to the CBBS where theres a checkbox that says 'show in VS toolbox'?

RBS: Add an email field

Edhy Rijo — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:17:23 GMT

Could it be possible to add an email field to the User Table and of course the Edit User Item form?

Also make the DisplayAs field available as a property of SecurityBasics.CurrentUser instead of having to create the User's BO and query the BO to get this info. Frankly I would like to see all User's fields available as properties of SecurityBasics.CurrentUser, that shouldn't be difficult to implement unless there is a reason not to?

Twitter

Geoff Hirst — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 09:39:05 GMT

hi,

If the answer to the above is yes, can you post what it is.

thanks

Geoff

Easy access to SF Help file

Edhy Rijo — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 14:27:19 GMT

Please add a new menu option to the StrataFrame main menu in the VS IDE to call the SF Help file.

Thanks.

Add ViewResultsAsLedgerCard property functionality to the ListView

Edhy Rijo — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:17:18 GMT

The Browser Dialog has a property named "ViewResultsAsLedgerCard" to show the resulting records as a Ledger Card, I know that currently I can handle that effect in the ListView.RowPopulating event, but it would be nice to have the same functionality in the listview by just setting a property.

Add current SF and SMO merge modules to download section

Keith Chisarik — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 23:08:20 GMT

Or make them a seperate thread in the "Posted Releases" forum? I had an issue with the SMO one, then found one posted in a thread that fixed my problems. It would be great to have them in one spot as maintenance releases are made available.

Thank you for considering.

I would like to see some enhancements to the Business Object Mapper....

William John Tello — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:02:12 GMT

1. I have noticed that sometimes I will forget to hit the <Check> button in the BOM after I have selected an entry in the multi-select drop down list box and some other changes, then I am surprised when nothing has changed after I hit the <Apply> button.

The BOM could be made smarter in that when ther user hits the <Apply> button, if nothing is checked to customize, then a confirmation dialog could appear which basically would state, "You are trying to apply changes, but you haven't selected anything to customize. Did you forget to select what you want to customize?" and let the user select yes or no.

2. Sometimes I will exit the BOM before doing a rebuild and wonder why my changes never made it into the business object.

The BOM could be changed so that if the user makes changes and then exits the BOM application, it is smart enough during its shutdown phase to present a confirmation dialog which basically would state, "You have made changes within the Business Object Mapper and have chosen not to do a rebuild of your business object. Would you like to rebuild your business object now?" and let the user select yes or no.

3. Lastly, I have created multiple business objects where I have mapped every System.String field to trim the data both left and right and to return an empty string on null, and every System.Decimal, System.Int16, System.Int32 and System.Int64 field to return a zero on null and every System.DateTime field to return a DateTime.MinValue on null, etc. It would be nice id I could save subsets of changes like this to a template file which I could apply to other business objects.

I would like to see the BOM have the ability to save subsets of certain types of changes so that the same types of changes could be applied to any other business objects created. I know the usefulness of this ability would be fairly limited in scope, but it would be great to have for those of us who are really lazy.

Browse Dialog

Paul Chase — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:56:41 GMT

I realize that I can add a Search Field more than once to the search fields collection and then have one field be less than and the other one be greater than to return a result set that is between the 2 values.

I feel this can be confusing and also requires that the developer anticipate that the user will want to return a result that contains all the records between a set of values. I would like to have an advanced option the uses between or not between clause on a search field and adds and additional control for the second value.

I am attaching a dummy picture of what I mean..

Paul

Static methods for TableName and TableSchema

Derek Price — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 09:04:04 GMT

Occasionally we have to hand-craft SQL and it would be nice if we could get the TableName and TableSchema from the Business Object as a static call rather than instantiate the BO just to get a string.
Forgive the contrived example:

[codesnippet]var myBO = new MyBO();
String.Format("MyBO TableName: {0}, myBO.TableName);
[/codesnippet]

[codesnippet]String.Format("MyBO TableName: {0}, MyBO.TableName);[/codesnippet]

Thanks,
Derek

DDT enhacements

Edhy Rijo — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:48:33 GMT

Here are some things I would like to see in the DDT.

Modify Table Structure

When entering a field name, update the description with the field name, pretty much the same way you do in the "Search Field Criteria" form of the Browser Dialog class Ex: FirstName = First Name

Add some reporting capabilities.

Power up the table rename feature to update default SP names

Edhy Rijo — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:30:40 GMT

Hi,
The default Store Procedure name for CRUD in DDT uses the Table Name as part of its name, when, when renaming a table it would be nice for DDT to ask if the SP names should also be renamed to reflect the new table name.

In my case, I have some fields which are standard in all tables, so I always used the "Copy Table" feature, and simply rename/delete the fields I don't need.

Setup Project StrataFrame + DevExpress

Malcon M. Mikami — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 06:39:57 GMT

I'm trying to generate a setup project for the Strataframe + DevExpress 8.2
When you generate a project only strataframe components of the application on the client works. When I put a component Wappes, it imports the dll MicroFour StrataFrame Inherited IU.
Gero again the project, with Dll Inherited he gives the error below:
I noticed also that the references come from local diferecentes:
MicroFour StrataFrameUI Path= C: \ Windows \ assembly \ GAC_MSIL \ MicroFour StrataFrame IU \ 1.6.0.0

Inherited MicroFour StrataFrame UI Path= C: \ Program Files (x86) \ Common Files \ MicroFour

What may be happening?

Estou tentando gerar um projeto de setup do Strataframe + DevExpress 8.2
Quando gero um projeto somente componetes do strataframe a aplicacao no cliente funciona. Quando coloco um componente wapper, ele importa a dll MicroFour StrataFrame Inherited UI.
Gero novamente o projeto, com a Dll Inherited ele apresenta o erro abaixo:
Notei tambem que as referencias vem de locais diferecentes:
MicroFour StrataFrameUI = C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL\MicroFour StrataFrame UI\1.6.0.0MicroFour StrataFrame Inherited UI = C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\MicroFourOque pode estar ocorrendo?

Add ability to exclude columns in BO Mapper

Greg McGuffey — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:38:22 GMT

It would be nice to be able to exclude columns from the BO Mapper. I have some columns that are only used on the backend in certain tables. They don't need to be in the BO. It'd be nice if there was an option in field customization to just not include the field when building the BO.

For more info see original post:

[url]http://forum.strataframe.net/FindPost21637.aspx[/url]

DateTime Text Box

Mike Tomlin — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 09:04:08 GMT

It would be useful to have the date and time handling - null dates etc - that is in the datetime picker available in just a textbox control for the display but not necessarily changing of the date. Perhaps if the datetime picker had an option to turn off display of the drop down calender?

Ability for a ThemedLinkMenu to display a Hotkey underscore.

Keith Gordijn — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:00:13 GMT

Currently the themedlinkmenu does not render the Title for a menu item with an underscore, for example, &Caption renders as &Caption.

Can this be enhanced to render as [u]C[/u]aption. This would allow keyboard shortcut keys to be visible to the user.

Cheers, Keith

Very often used Devexpress LookupEdit and other DevExpress controls that are not wrapped.

Ertan Deniz — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 06:11:49 GMT

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 ?

Browse dialog

Teddy Jensen — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:32:53 GMT

I use the browsedialog and it works really good. In some of my forms I have the need to set the returnSelectedRecordOnly and others i don't.

Now some of my users would like to have the possibility to choose themselves whether the browsedialog should return all records from the browsedialog or just return the selected record.

So I think it would be nice if the developer could set the default setting and then make this functionality available to the enduser.

Maybe put a checkbox to select all records on the browsedialog besides the advanced options.

/Teddy

AllFieldNames

Larry Caylor — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:00:44 GMT

I'd like to see the BO property AllFieldsNames marked as Public instead of Protected. I'm building some complex business objects and I'd like to be able to fill the contained object from the complex object. Currently all other methods and properties required to do so are marked public.

-Larry

Infragistics Wrapper

Larry Caylor — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:13:43 GMT

I'm on the 1.6.7 beta and I noticed that the Infragistics wrapper is still setting the IgnoreManagedReadOnlyState to True, which is the opposite of the standard StrataFrame controls. I was looking through past posts and I thought this was on the list to be changed. Is it still on list?

Also I would like to suggest that the ReadOnly property be used in place of the Enabled property for the Infragistic controls that implement ReadOnly. It makes the control a lot easier to read when it is in the "ReadOnly state.

I've been maintaining my own copy of the Infragistics wrapper to implement these two items but it would be nice if they were in the base product. Otherwise I would like to see something in the release notes that states that the wrapper has or has not been updated so that I know I have to re-implement my changes.

Ability to disable buttons on MaintenanceFormToolstrip

Greg McGuffey — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:36:26 GMT

I'd like to be able to enable/disable the new/edit/save/undo/delete buttons on the maintenaceformtoostrip, rather than only being able to hide/show them. I.e. have properties like EnableAdd, EnableDelete, EnableSaveUndo, etc. in addition to IncludeX properties.

Rational:
I have situations were data access is limited based on a value in the record (typically a status type field). I'm currently using the IncludeX properties, but then the toolstrip buttons are jumping around because the buttons are hidden/shown from record to record. This is most annoying when stepping through the records using the navigation controls, as they are jumping around.

Thanks!

Public access of DependendUponBO field

Chan — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 02:23:20 GMT

Hi,
I would like to request to allow public access of DependendUponBO collection. I request so because I would like to have a class that collect BO's broken rules, including its parentBO, ChildBO and and dependendBO.

Thank you

SnapShot

Tim Dol — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 09:34:25 GMT

Add ability to RemoveByKey and RemoveAll.

MessageForm

Michel Levy — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 05:49:19 GMT

Hi,

Is it possible to provide a Position property (centered, and at least NW, NE, SW, SE) and a ParentForm property to the MessageForm class ?

Thanks

"Save and New" toolbar button?

Aaron Young — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 08:54:12 GMT

Hi,

I think users would appreciate a "Save and New" toolbar button that, surprisingly, saves the current record before adding a new record. It is in a number of applications including Microsoft Office Accounting and is very useful.

Pretty please? :)

Aaron