StrataFrame Forum / StrataFrame Application Framework / Enhancement Requests

Localization for default login form

Guillermo Vilas — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 08:58:39 GMT

The default login form provided with the Core module is just fine. It is just annoying that I have to manually add the localization labels and logic to the source code with each release.
Thanks

Business Rules Generation

Michael Reese — Thu, 08 May 2008 14:50:37 GMT

Would be nice to have some level of Broken Rules Generation when we do a full or partial build in the BO Mapper?

Michael

Forum RSS Enhancement

Chris Crabtree — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 19:37:03 GMT

...is there a setting that will feed not only the original topic, but also the responses?

What happens is that I get over RSS that someone posted an interesting question that would apply to me, and...that's it. So I'm left hanging without knowing what the responses were. :-(

Now, there is a link to the 'original post' or something like that where I can see all that, but that's less than convenient, especially in my case where I'm usually viewing RSS feeds on my mobile phone.

More importantly, not having the responses in the feed means that only the original posts are searchable from within the RSS reader. So if I'm searching across all my feeds in my desktop RSS aggregator for something to do with, say, SQLConnection timeouts, then I'm missing half the discussion from the SF forums. Which is a shame due to the high quality. :-)

Thanks!

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!

Option in Form to always stay in edit mode.

George Nentidis — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 11:52:41 GMT

It would be nice if the StandardForm had some kind of a boolean property to always stay in edit mode. Now after Save, the form always returns in ReadOnly mode until you press (or call) Edit again. Being the form in ReadOnly mode looks strange to our customers, since they have used forms to be editable. So we always have to call Save and Edit together. This sometimes messes with the focus of controls and we have to write the same code all over again in all our forms.

It would be nice if this was an option.

Thanks

I want your opinion!

Trent L. Taylor — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:56:23 GMT

I am usually the person on the other end of this post...but this time I want your answers! As you know, we are putting together a knowledge base. Part of this will be FAQs for each portion of StrataFrame (framework, DDT, ES, etc). However, even if it is related to something else that you see often out here, I want your opinion...so I am really going for those vets who spend a lot of time viewing the forum posts. This is not "things I want to see in the KB" but rather "FAQs of SF developers, newbies, advanced, etc." If you see if out here a lot, I want your opinion as to what topics should be in the FAQ section for each topic.

I am only going to post in this one thread, but this can cover an apsect of StrataFrame....so let me know what you think! Thanks!!!! :)

Transactional Stored Procedure Call

Ertan Deniz — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:19:00 GMT

As an example, I have a method implemented with an SP with some business logic inside. (XOperations.UpdateX)

And I need to call this method as a part of a transaction.

BeginTransaction ;

Object1.Save ;

Xoperations.UpdateX;

Object2.Save;

Commit;

I've found that DbSourceItem.ExecuteNonQuery method has a transactional parameters.

Should I use DbSourceItem.ExecuteNonQuery method ? Or anything else ?

SORT the Binding Fields!

Andria Jensen — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:25:50 GMT

Please please please....can you guys put in a sort for the Binding Fields? They currently come into the BO Mapper in the order they are in the db, and you can't sort by name. Also, when setting the BindingField property on a control, they are in that same order. This makes it extremely tedious to scroll through 50 fields in no particular order looking for the one you want. If you could simply alphabetize these fields in the mapper and also in the BindingField dropdown it would be a huge help! Thanks!

BO.GetFieldDescription improvement

Fabian R Silva, - — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:20:53 GMT

Is nice to see that the newer versions have improvements on DDT/MS_DESCRIPTION, some time ago I post a question about it on http://forum.strataframe.net/Topic10737-13-1.aspx and Ben say that DDT not support it yet.
These days, I try to get the MS_description to set column headers descriptions automatically from it and some sort of this stuff. I see that the DDT imports it, the BOMapper Map it to an "Description" attribute of the property of the field. Now I Try to get it with the "GetFieldDescription" method of the businessobjects

I see the help (2 hours later that I was implement it :w00t:) to see that it exist, this say:

[quote]GetFieldDescription Method (FieldName)
--------------------------------------
Returns the extended description for a field name (i.e. Customer's Last Name) from the description attribute on the field property. [b]If the Description() attribute is missing, the actual field name will be returned[/b].
[/quote]
I see that all the properties that map fields from BO have a Description attribute, but when MS_Description doesn't have a value, this value are "" (Empty), and when I call MyBO.GetDescription I get a empty value (and not the one from the MyBo.somefieldname)

I "fix" that with this code:
MyDescription = _MyBO.GetFieldDescription("MyField") '<-- it retrieve a empty value
If String.IsNullOrEmpty(MyDescription) Then
MyDescription = _MyBO.GetPropertyDescriptor("MyField").DisplayName
End If

It worked Ok, but I suppose that it is good that if GetFieldDescription detect a empty description atttibute, it retrieve the "somefielname" property string :)

Thanks for the great support :)

Fabian.

SF 2.0?

Chan — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:19:47 GMT

Hi,
I was hearing about SF 2.0 for quite a long time, which mentioned will be including a lot of fanstatic features such as LINQ support, ORM mapper and etc. I would like to know, what is your roadmap for this? Will it be 2008, 2009 or... all this features will be released incrementally?

Thank you

Extending Smart Tags with Designer Actions in SF classes

Charles R Hankey — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 08:16:22 GMT

I am a VS/SF/.NET newbie and come from a VFP/VFE world of RAD builders and wizards. I am in awe of the potential for this kind of stuff in Visual Studio.

It would seem natural to have the SF base controls - textbox etc - have smart tags that immediately show the properties that will almost certainly have to be set every time they are dropped on a form - name, binding field, text etc.

I am delving into designer actions and how to implement them, but I thought it would be worth asking if anyone could be kind enough to walk me through this in a Strataframe context - how would I add binding field to the smart tag for all Strataframe textboxes ( and how will I do this in a way that future updates won't blow away my changes)

Seems like everyone working with SF a lot must have already thought of this. Would suggest it as a framework enhancement.

TIA

Charles

A shared (static) method to return multiple data tables

Greg McGuffey — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:54:58 GMT

My first use of the new FillMultipleDataTables() method, I discovered what I really wanted was a method that would actually fill multiple data tables, not BOs. I can use this method and just get the CurrentDataTable from each of the BOs, but it would be nice to have a GetMultipleDataTables() method that would accept a command object and a set of data tables, filling the datatables.

Thanks!

Source Code for VS 2005

George Nentidis — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 04:07:42 GMT

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but could there be a VS 2005 version of the source code projects?

An Editable EhnancedList

George Nentidis — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 03:59:53 GMT

EnhancedList is a read-only DevExpress grid, that also looses column data types, since it has to convert everything to a string, in order to support string.Format masks. Don't get me wrong, it is a great component, and the dialog with the column editor is also great.

I think though that an editable DevExpress grid that is bound directly to a BO would be great to have, and also a very reasonable addition to the DevExpress Strata components. With a component like that, we could work with Strata components and BOs only, without the need of BussinessBindingSources. We could also use correctly all the filter capabilities of a DevExpress grid.

I don't know if others agree but I really look forward for such a component.

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.

Browse Dialog - BusinessObjectToPopulate

Paul Chase — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 16:23:47 GMT

Would it be possible to have a property on the browse dialog to only fill the BusinessObjectToPopulate with the selected row rather than all the rows that were returned in the initial search.

Posted Releses versus Available files in my account.

Rogerio Mauri — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 19:28:24 GMT

The available files in my account download already contemplate the last modifications (Posted Releases).

This is correct?

v 1.65 ??

Larry Caylor — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 18:37:38 GMT

Judging from the spiffy new StrataFrame main web page I'm assuming that the official 1.65 release is almost here:D. So far the beta release has been working well for me along with VS2008. Keep up the great work!

Better keyboard support in MessageForm

George Nentidis — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:19:13 GMT

The MessageForm only supports pressing the Enter key, for selecting the default button. It would be much easier for keyboard users, to also implement a Cancel button with the Escape key, and also all buttons on the form to have a shortcut key associated with them. For instance "Y" for Yes, "N" for N etc. Those shortcuts could be specified from localization resources in the form "&Yes", like it's the Windows default.

We have a lot of users with heavy data entry, that type with both hands. You would be suprised to see how fast they type in data. For them, having to leave the keyboard, grab the mouse, move the cursor to the correct point and click, every now and then, just to answer a simple Yes/No question, costs them time and annoys them.

So I think this is a small enhancement that would greatly improve usability of an application.

Thank you

(By the way, the "Spell Check" button in the "Post New Topic" form comes really in handy :))

ADO.NET Entity Framework

Ertan Deniz — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:18:23 GMT

I wonder your plans to integrate with this technology.

"Microsoft is deepening its investment in the ADO.NET Entity Framework as a critical piece of Microsoft’s Data Platform vision."

http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet/archive/2007/04/28/ado-net-entity-framework-update.aspx

Security Enhancement

Larry Caylor — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:17:21 GMT

I'd like to see an enhancement to the security framework that provides a mechanism to specify which domains are used when Windows authentication is enabled. I'd like to be able to limit the application to the current domain or let it seek out the parent and other child domains.

The reason for this request is that the agency I work for is a child domain in a larger AD structure. I've already experienced problems where my application failed because some other child domain was not reachable. As a workaround I've modified the framework to skip child domains that it can't find when it builds the list of child domains.

This weekend there was a power outage in our County's main data center that took down the parent domain's domain controller. This would have been an issue except the power failure also took down our Internet connectivity which prevented our Enterprise Server from accepting new connections since it couldn't "phone home" (Thanks for commitment to fix that:)). Now that I have the Internet and ES back I'm finding that I my users are experiencing a 60 second delay from the time an application is launched until the login screen is displayed. A little profiling with Ants shows about that much time being spent in "Login.AddChildDomainToList". Since one of our core Cisco routers was damaged in the outage I'm sure it's a network related issue that will eventually get fixed. However since I really have no interest in any of the other domains I'd really like to limit my application's dependance on them. As a test I modified the framework to only list the current domain and the login screen was displayed almost immediately.

Maybe a setting could be added to the security database or other config file that tells the application to look for the parent and child domains or just use (list) the current domain. That would allow applications that use Windows authentication to be easily configured to their environment without having to re-compile. I'd also like to see a fix for unreachable child domains when the domain list is being built.

-Larry

Default SQL Server instance

Crones — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:07:46 GMT

Is it possible to specify/change the default SQL Server instance in the DDT? I'm consistently changing and typing in localhost\SQLExpress when deploying design changes during development?

Restrict Nullable Generic for string fields

Ertan Deniz — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 08:07:02 GMT

http://forum.strataframe.net/Topic1113-6-1.aspx

You can solve this issue in the Business Object Mapper tool. Because, Generated code have to be compiled with no errors.

Improve required field message

Greg McGuffey — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:18:38 GMT

I'd like to see the required field message become a template so the name of the field could be added to the message (actually, the value set for the description attribute of the field). This would allow for more user friendly message and facilitate the easy creation of a list of all the broken messages.

When I try to do the later now (create a list of all the current broken records), if I leave the broken rules that are required field broken rules alone, I might have a bunch of rules that all say "This field is required"...not very helpful. I have to do a fair amount of work to get the messages user friendly (I'm looping through the broken rules, testing for this message, then using the field with a select to reset the message...sigh).

Using the description attribute of course will be most useful when the BO Mapper allows us to customize this.

Thanks! :D

Make sample data optional during install

Greg McGuffey — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:13:05 GMT

I'm installing SF 1.6.5 beta. Have been for about 1.5 hours. Based on the speed of the sample data being loaded, I've got 4 to 6 hours left. The problem is that my SF database is remote. I'm wondering if the sample data part of the install (assuming that the databases are being updated) could be optional. If it was, I'd have been done about 1.4 hours ago. Ideally, it could be installed separately. I need to upgrade the SF db, but don't need the sample data immediately. I could then have my colleague install it when she gets back from vacation next week. So, to recap:

- could sample data be optional during install
- could install be run again to just install the sample data

Thanks!

(well, I can catch up on some reading now anyway...)

Every release should come with source code

Chan — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:47:40 GMT

Hi,
I can see there are many beta/minor update released recently. I would like to request SF team to release corresponding source code as well so that it ease for debugging.

Thank you

Allow custom combobox in browsedialog

Chan — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 18:48:50 GMT

Hi,
I would like to request to have way to specify what combobox control should be used in browsedialog. I found that, current combobox used in browsedialog doesn't not support incremental search which make user difficult to navigate the desired selection.

We could limited to only control respected IListControl interface.

Thank you

Preserve rowstate when copydata

Chan — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 10:48:16 GMT

Hi,
Firstly, I would like to appreciate the enhancement made to CopyDataFrom method which only copy data from column that exist in target table.

I would like to ask for enhancement to have additional option whether want to preserve the data rowstate. It is very usually while we are working on feature like copy, import data from other txn (import purchase order txns to purchase invoice) and etc.

Thank you

Mark Clear() & Refresh() Overridable

Larry Caylor — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 10:52:51 GMT

I'd like see the Clear() and Refresh() methods on the business object marked Overridable. This will allow me to add my own logic to clear or refresh contained objects in a complex BO.

-Larry

Validation rules as a list of objects

George Nentidis — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 08:40:17 GMT

It would be nice for validation rules to be a list of object that we can add in the BO's constructor or in virtual method we override. Then instead of calling custom code in the CheckRulesOnCurrentRow, the BO could have those rules available wherever it needs them. It would also help us build a small library of such validation rules that can be used in many different cases.

Description added to BO Mapper

Greg McGuffey — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:54:22 GMT

I'm not sure if I asked for this before, but it recently it reared its head again. I'd like to be able to control what text is shown to the user on the concurrency manager. I know that the Description attribute is used, but I only have control over that with custom properties and BOs derived from the DDT. Most of my tables aren't derived from the DDT, but directly from SQL. So, pretty much, I'm wondering if there could be a field in the BO mapper to enter a name, it could default to the field name, that would populate the Description attribute when the BO is built.

Thanks!

BO Inheritance

George Nentidis — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 04:32:50 GMT

I have posted a question about this, and since it is not yet implemented, I figured it would be nice to propose it as an enhancement.

It would be nice to have inheritance between BOs, exactly as any other object. Meaning, for each BO to able to inherit properties and methods of a parent BO, and also add some of its own (both properties and methods).

Anything that makes the framework more object-oriented, whould lead to more managable code.

Subscription Renewal

Hugo R. Figueroa — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:44:13 GMT

Hi, This has nothing to do with the Framework itself, but I think it is important.

My annual subscription is about to expire in the next days, but I haven't received any notification email.

I don't want to lose my benefits by means of let my subscription expire. Lucky me I checked My account (I normally don't do that) and saw the expiration date.

So could you (or your sales department) implement an email warning when the subscriptions are about to expire?

;)

Thank You.

Custom Field Property in BO Mapper

Ben Hayat — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 11:07:47 GMT

It would be great to be able to create a "Custom Field Property" skeleton in the BO Mapper. This way, the dialog box can ask a series of questions and then create the formation of the property (with attributes) and the we can add any additional code there.

VS2008 support

Keith Chisarik — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 07:43:33 GMT

Been playing a lot more with VS2008 and I likey :)

I have migrated a lot of my non-SF 2.0 projects to 3.5 successfully to start implementing new features and am wondering when you guys plan to support 2008, it currently is in "go-live" status which means MS does support it in production environments.

I would appreciate any info you can give me when I can start using 2008 with SF.

Thanks.

(SF Maintenance Form) ContextMenuStrip synchronized with the MaintenanceFormToolStrip

Rogerio Mauri — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 08:18:16 GMT

Hi...

I want to suggest the inclusion of this functionality in the SF Maintenance: A ContextMenuStrip control synchronized with the MaintenanceFormToolStrip.

The alterations made in the properties of MaintenanceFormToolStrip (example: IncludeSaveAndUndoButtons) would be synchronized in ContextMenuStrip. The events and methods also.

I justify the inclusion of this functionality to be able to use to advantage the resource of the ShortcutKeys of ContextMenuStrip control.

In the example that I am sending, the commands Novo(Ins) and Exclui(Del) are with its marked properties of visualization as false.
They are there only for being able to interpret keyboard keys INS and DEL respectively.

In ContextMenuStrip control the developer could only modify the properties of shortcutkeys, changing its options.

It forgives me if the translation of the Portuguese for the English, made in the AltaVista Translation, was not good. :blush:

Rogério Mauri (From Brazil)

Guid PrimeKey as Row Guid for Replication

Paul Chase — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:53:21 GMT

I am using Guid's a Primary Keys and also as Rowguid's for replication. The issue is on update's, If a field is specifed as rowguid it cannot be updated so the update fails.

I made the following changes to make this work can you please add to your code so I dont break at next update? or let me know how and what you want to change so I dont get a suprise next update :)

Thanks

Paul

To Business layer I added this Property. (with a private as well)

''' <summary>

''' Gets or sets a value that determines whether the primary key for this business object is

''' a RowGuid

''' </summary>

''' <value></value>

''' <returns></returns>

''' <remarks></remarks>

<Category(EDITOR_CATEGORY_CRUD), _

DefaultValue(True), _

Description("Determines whether the primary key for this business object is a RowGuid.")> _

Public Property PrimaryKeyIsRowGuid() As Boolean

Get

Return Me._PrimaryKeyIsRowGuid

End Get

Set(ByVal value As Boolean)

Me._PrimaryKeyIsRowGuid = value

End Set

End Property

And in Data Layer

In method BuildUpdateInfo aroung line 573

'----------------------> Paul made a change the code here from

'--this

'-- Add the pk field to the fields to update if the primary key if not

' auto incremented

' If Not Me._BusinessObject.PrimaryKeyIsAutoIncremented Then

' loInfo.Fields.Add(lcFieldName)

' End If

'---> to

'-- Add the pk field to the fields to update if the primary key if not

' auto incremented or Row-Guid

If Not Me._BusinessObject.PrimaryKeyIsAutoIncremented AndAlso Not Me._BusinessObject.PrimaryKeyIsRowGuid Then

loInfo.Fields.Add(lcFieldName)

End If

Regarding the Message Item Maintenance Screen within the Message Editor Module

Mike Rogers — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 21:09:46 GMT

I am using the Message Item Maintenance to add a message that the record has a broken rule. example [Duplicate Record] The problem with this is that there is no way to save this with out using the RTF format. When it is displayed to the user they would have to see the rtf garbage text with the actual message. I have to go to the [MessageItems] table and edit this manually to correct the problem. It would be nice to have the option to save within the Message Item Maintenance Screen [RTF] or [Plain Text]. Thanks

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.

Improve how a user changes their password

Greg McGuffey — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:27:26 GMT

Provide a mechanism to change the current users password and/or to change an arbitrary users password using just the user PK.

As far as I know, the only mechanism provided to allow users to change passwords is to use the Login.ShowPasswordChangeForm(), which is pretty cumbersome and not obvious how to use (to me anyway). This form takes a SFSUsersBO and then that BO must be saved if the user actually entered information that would change the password. I.e. currently the following is needed to change a users password:

[codesnippet]Using userBO as New SFSUsersBO()
userBO.FillByPrimaryKey(SecurityBasics.CurrentUser.UserPK)
If Login.ShowPasswordChangeForm(userBO) Then
userBO.Save()
End If
End Using[/codesnippet]

Seems to me there could easily be a method (or two...or overloads) to more easily allow for the changing of a users password:

[codesnippet]Public Function ChangeCurrentUsersPassword()
Return ChangeUserPassword(SecurityBasics.CurrentUser.UserPK)
End Function

Public Function ChangeUserPassword(userPK As Integer)
Dim changed As Boolean
Using userBO as New SFSUsersBO()
userBO.FillByPrimaryKey(userPK)
If Login.ShowPasswordChangeForm(userBO) Then
userBO.Save()
changed = True
Else
changed = False
End If
End Using
Return changed
End Function[/codesnippet]

With some function like this, only a single line of code would be needed and it would be pretty obvious how to implement it! :D