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Bill Mason
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Group: Forum Members
Posts: 13,
Visits: 204
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Hello, My trial period has expired but I am glad to see that I can still post a question. I have read here before that plans for version 2 should be around mid year and that you have plans to support Silverlight and WPF. I am also evaluating DevForce and have been very impressed with their support for SL & WPF. As a matter of fact, Winforms and Webforms seem to have been pushed back and most everything in their product is now pointing in this new direction. Now to my questions. 1. I was wondering if someone could expand on exactly what your plans are around SL & WPF? I am not pushing the schedule issue because I know how that works and besides, by the time I can be up to speed on your product, June should be here! I am interested in how you plan to tie them into your products and how this will affect the way StrataFrame is used. 2. I also have been wondering about the role of Enterprise Server. It seems to me (with my limited knowledge) that using ES with Silverlight would be the way to go. Would this be considered a Best Practise? Overall I am very impressed with Strataframe and it seems to fit my programming style very well. I love the Database deployment utility and can't imagine deploying an app without the benefit of the security roles module. I just am concerned about making the right choice as relates to the newer technology. Thanks,
Bill Mason
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Bill Mason
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Group: Forum Members
Posts: 13,
Visits: 204
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Dustin Taylor
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Group: StrataFrame Users
Posts: 364,
Visits: 771
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Hi, I apologize for overlooking the original post here. I'm glad you had a good experience with the trial, let's see if we can clear up the questions: 1. I was wondering if someone could expand on exactly what your plans are around SL & WPF? I am not pushing the schedule issue because I know how that works and besides, by the time I can be up to speed on your product, June should be here! I am interested in how you plan to tie them into your products and how this will affect the way StrataFrame is used.
What we will be looking at here would be much akin to what you can already see in the standard WinForms side of the framework. Streamlining the creation and design of forms, and the creation of custom controls / designers as appropriate to fully utilize the benefits of WPF. Since we haven't undergone primary development here, I can't speak to the specifics of what exactly that will entail. Instead, looking at our development and design philosophies, and how they have directed our current and past development would be the best bet to seeing our direction here. StrataFrame, as a product, is designed to maximize the benefits of .NET development, fill and smooth the gaps we see in that process, and minimize any deficits we (as application developers ourselves) see there as well. That outlook is what brought the DDT, role based security, BO Mapper, and so on into the picture. It also extends to our streamlining of maintenance forms in WinForms, and our growing collection of WinForms controls. That same experience and mentality will be directed towards WPF as we move our own application development in that direction and, in turn, StrataFrame will grow to incorporate similar features and functionality in regards to WPF development. The web side of the framework will be changing quite a bit in the next iteration of StrataFrame, and, as the environment stands now, Silverlight is poised to be very central to that development. We are currently breaking ground on some in-house Silverlight development and, as is the case with the WinForms / WPF side of the framework, our own experiences and battles there will go a long way to maturing and defining the look and feel of that portion of the framework. In regards to time frames, you are correct in that both of these are central to our plans for SF 2.0. WPF and SL development and focus are both definately in StrataFrame's future, though they are not the very next things on the agenda. If I had to put a time frame based on our current plans and schedules, I would say end of 2010, beginning of 2011 to start seeing the fruits of that movement. 2. I also have been wondering about the role of Enterprise Server. It seems to me (with my limited knowledge) that using ES with Silverlight would be the way to go. Would this be considered a Best Practise?
Yep, ES and Silverlight are a great fit. Much like standard web development, using ES in conjunction with SL has many benefits in regards to connection pooling, added security and compression, more flexibility on where the SQL backend is located, etc. ES is very helpful in simplifying and solidifying the data connection for existing ASP.NET websites (we use it for all of ours) and, in the same way, it will be just as useful in keeping that data connection just as simple and solid as web apps move into Silverlight. Thanks again for your interest! Sorry I couldn't be more specific, but hopefully that sheds at least some light on the matter.  |
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Larry Caylor
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Group: Awaiting Activation
Posts: 592,
Visits: 3.7K
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Happy New Year to the SF gang! Since it is a new year, I'm wondering if we will be seeing support for Silverlight and WPF in the near future. Can you provided an update on what's been happening in this area since the last post?
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Charles R Hankey
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Group: Forum Members
Posts: 524,
Visits: 30K
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Trent Taylor
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Group: StrataFrame Developers
Posts: 6.6K,
Visits: 6.9K
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Hello all:
Here is a rough road map. We are going to be reworking the core of the framework and it will actually begin with the DDT. To allow for a tighter integration into the business objects and the framework, the DDT will be getting a rework. This will include a lot of new functionality...a lot! This will act as a springboard for the new business object formats. In short, the ADO.NET internal data table will be replaced with faster, more efficient object model...but don't worry, the BOs will still work with ADO.NET data tables! At this point, the infrastructure to have fast and binding and support for WPF and related environments will be available. We have discussed providing an interim build that will add support for basic WPF binding, but this has yet to be 100% decided.
You will begin to see new product and releases around March/April 2011. We are also keeping our eye on Silverlight. WPF is a definite, but there have been rumors that Silverlight may be going away...silently. So before a lot of development time is spent on Silverlight specifically, we are going to make sure that resources are not spent in vain.
We will be releasing some additional details as to what has been going on for the past 18 months as well and a more static and rigid production cycle going forward. Our goal...to provide a dedicated team of crackerjack developers to the SF team and to the future of StrataFrame.
Stay tuned...more coming very soon!
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Edhy Rijo
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Group: StrataFrame Users
Posts: 2.4K,
Visits: 23K
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Trent L. Taylor (1/12/2011)
We will be releasing some additional details as to what has been going on for the past 18 months as well and a more static and rigid production cycle going forward. Our goal...to provide a dedicated team of crackerjack developers to the SF team and to the future of StrataFrame.
Stay tuned...more coming very soon!Those are great news!!! 
Edhy Rijo
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Larry Caylor
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Group: Awaiting Activation
Posts: 592,
Visits: 3.7K
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Trent, Thanks for the update. I've heard the rumors of Silverlight's demise, but you wouldn't know it looking at the control vendor's web sites or even Microsoft. I found the following on the MS Silverlight site, "Silverlight is the application development platform for Windows Phone 7." What prompted my post in the first place is that I've been wondering what the best approach is going forward in building applications using SF that will run both on the PC and in the browser, and possbily Windows Phone 7 (if it doesn't fade away). Would that be a WPF application built to run locally and in the browser, WPF for the desktop and Webforms for the browser, or SF business objects used with ASP .Net MVC, or Silverlight. It seems clear that WPF will eventually replace Winforms, but it's not as clear to me what the best MS technology will be for web applications and how SF will fit in. Looking forward to 2011 and new releases
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Trent Taylor
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Group: StrataFrame Developers
Posts: 6.6K,
Visits: 6.9K
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Great insight, and great thoughts. Here is the underlying issue...there just isn't a "Silver Bullet" to kill them all at once. Things are getting closer though. With XAML and WPF, there is more commonality now than every before...assuming Silverlight lives In truth, people have been extremely slow to adopt Silverlight, and most controls developers are interested in moving product...who isn't right? But this is why the next version of SF will be so important as it will pave a way for long-term development that will be sticking around....and WPF will be that for sure on the desktop side. Honestly, I think that Silverlight may get a second wind, but only time will tell. Microsoft has been pushing extremely hard the last 2-3 years to tools developers like us and the rest of the world to get off the WinForms bus and jump 100% onto the WPF and Silverlight bus. Though I know WPF is a great product and we look forward to moving that way, the issue is that there are so many developers that still have new and legacy products on WinForms that will have a long lifespan. The rest of the world doesn't move as fast as Microsoft and that is part of the problem with some of the technologies that they release. In our world, we are actually looking to...wait for it...iPhone and iPad development for the mobile side of things. It is Objective C, but in truth, a very stable and clearly a popular platform. As much as I would like to see it, I just don't think most people want to move to Windows 7 phones. So we want to develop for a platform that people have already adopted and are willing to use without a fight. There are a lot of things to evaluate, and that is why we try and do our research before wasting your time as well as ours. We have never been much of a ,"Be on the Microsoft bandwagon to be cool" company. We want to produce realistic tools and products that meet the masses and help bring their products forward. So that said, it should be interesting to see how 2011 ends up in a few areas!
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Charles R Hankey
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Group: Forum Members
Posts: 524,
Visits: 30K
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Hi Trent - Really good to hear from you. (and sorry about mixing up TCU and Texas A&M but at least be happy that when somebody says "Texas Christian" you're the first person I think of )For the new BO approach, are you considering some kind of ORM ala EF ? Most of the third party control vendors seem to favor approaches using EF and Linq to Entities. I could see this would mean a major overhaul of DDT so when you talked about it starting there I got the idea that maybe you were working on extending the EF much as Ideablade has done and incorporating all the great stuff DDT does. I hope that if you are building from the datalayer outward (upward?) that something to bind to might be available for WPF even before you create WPF controls so those of us using DevExpress etc can start using SF for WPF apps ( maybe even just on a closed beta basis when you get it that far ) Anyway, good to hear SF is going in the direction your talking about. I know all of us are anxious to see the results.
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