Is there any experience or guidance around employing StrataFrame in conjunction with the guidance and application blocks coming from Microsoft's Patterns and Practices group?

In particular the UIP and CAB.

Alex

We are always looking to what is coming out from Microsoft.  But as always, are careful to make implicit additions to the framework until we see where Microsoft will land.  An example of this is LINQ and Object Spaces.  There was a lot of buzz and momentum on Object Spaces...right up to the day that they de-commited   So we are waiting to see what happens with LINQ because it looks like it could go the same direction at the moment.

We are very sensitive to the developer market place and to the needs of our users.  So when we see a viable technology that needs to be added, we generally do just that.

With that being said, StrataFrame can be used in conjunction as we speak, however, much of the work will be your responsibility since we have not yet made implicit implementations into the framework to support this directly.

Hope this helps.

I have to agree that one has to be careful with adopting Microsofts 'Best Practices' and code blocks. While I love that Microsoft is now trying to make an effort to develop these materials, it hasn't been recently (around the release of the Enterprise Library) that I felt that they were on board with what was actually happening in development shops. Now, instead of Microsoft trying to reinvent the wheel so it can have their copyright or forging their own path, they realize that they should be going out and seeing how .NET is actually being used.

We attempted to use several of the code blocks (caching, security, exception handling and logging blocks) in a fairly large project and you could tell that it seemed like an implementation that was half thought out.  Their 'patterns' were more aligned with given credence to following the MSF Process Model (yet another 'steal' some true best practices and 'tweak' it to the Microsoft way) than it was to methodologies being used by the average development shop.

Anyways, I'm not knocking Microsoft, but I guess alluding to the caution that you have to exert when adopting more than just their tools.

BTW, I prefer the common theme that StrataFrame is being directed in now; such as creating wrappers to support my existing investments in components (like my Infragistics stuff that took me years to come to terms with).

Lance