WCSF is a software factory recommended from microsoft for developing web based applications. I feel that some thought is required on below before commiting to a software foctory:
What is it?
What are different features of it?
How it will improve the productivity?
How it will help in delivering on time with quality?
Are there any limitations/cons to it?
Are there any better alternatives to it?
Please help me in answering above questions.
Web Client Software Factory
alt text http://i3.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=websf&DownloadId=3727
The Web Client Software Factory (WCSF)
provides a set of guidance for
architects and developers building
enterprise Web applications. The
factory includes samples, reusable
code and a guidance package which
automates key development tasks from
within Visual Studio.
Using the Web Client Software Factory
assets, developers can create
Composite Web applications composed of
independently developed and deployed
modules. These modules are dynamically
brought together at runtime into a
common shell. Additionally the factory
includes support for ASP.NET AJAX thus
providing users with a richer and more
responsive user experience.
From here
Edit:
There is a similar article here in SO.
Is .NET WCSF the way to go?
Related
I am currently working with JAVA/J2EE domain, my project manager asked me to work for an mobile application development with Ruby RhoMobile, but I don't have idea about these frameworks other than just go through wiki links.
My question is about the learning curve for this framework with java background and some basic knowledge of CSS, Jquery,Javascript. Is there any best online training for Ruby RhoMobile.
Your best option is to contact Tau-Technologies, the primary maintainer of the RhoMobile framework.
They provide the official open source distribution and offer an enterprise grade paid support. For sure they can provide paid training as well as consultancy and customization on the framework.
Thank you in advance for your assistance.
Our team has been spoiled by MS P&P Enterprise Library/Unity as we have made great use of the DI, Exceptions Management, Validation and Logging Capabilities. Traditionally, our front ends have been forms based (Windows Forms, ASP.NET, etc).
As we approach WP7 development, and understanding it is a new platform with much less resources, we are looking to leverage existing frameworks, open source, etc that may exist that deals with these issues on the WP7 client (excepting copy left licensed code).
We are definitely going to implement Prism on WP7, and have started our initial research into the Prism framework capabilities in these areas. It's a great framework, and our initial assessment is that is for legitimate reasons it is more focused on the composite architecture, and we need to use Prism as the architecture to do a little bit more implementation on our own of cross cutting exceptions management, etc capabilities building on the baseline that Prism provides.
Just wanted to confirm, as we have not been able to identify any, that there are no open source or other frameworks out there for WP7 with the Enterprise Library coverage on exceptions management, validation and logging?
Thanks again.
WP7Contrib has lots of support for logging, DI and (much) more.
well you could use Caliburn Micro
Global handling exception in WPF app with Caliburn.Micro
not sure if this goes down with the PRISM well though
22 sept 2011
there is siverlight integration on the enterprise library http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/practices
What's your experience in using web technologies (HTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript) to implement part of the functionality of a GUI application? Pros and cons, please.
No servers, relational databases, AJAX, or cookies for session management, nor an existing webapp either, but rather a GUI app that uses web widgets (like Qt WebKit) to render and handle substantial parts of the UI, while taking advantage of a GUI framework to achieve an even richer interaction and better desktop integration.
I've already validated that the approach is possible using PyQt. Content can be rendered from the file system or from strings, and URL requests (images or clicks) can be captured and served by the form's event handlers. CSS and JavaScript are supported, perhaps with some limitations.
# ...
self.webView.page().setLinkDelegationPolicy(
QtWebKit.QWebPage.DelegateExternalLinks
)
#...
class TotiMainWindow(QtGui.QMainWindow):
def linkClicked(self, url):
pass # events arrive here
Note: This question is different from this one and this one made before, among other things because there is no requirement to use web technologies on the GUI, but there is the requirement that the application should work without a network connection available, and should integrate well with the default desktop over different platforms, without previous infrastructure requirements (no .NET, Java, browsers, or database servers).
Note: I posted a different version of this question on PMS but found very little experience with this approach there.
Closing Note
I just found most of the information I was looking for in a series of blog posts by André Pareis.
I think the largest advantage to using web markup like HTML/CSS and other web technologies is that desktop apps may very well have their days numbered.
As we speak, Google engineers are working on the Chromium OS, which essentially consists of a single GUI application... the browser...
Now, while nothing may never actually come of it, there is clearly a rising trend in the number of applications accessible through a web browser, accessible anywhere. It seems to me that this is the future of application development.
By using these technologies, this becomes one less headache you have to deal with when or if you determine that your app should be available as a web application.
Update: A few years ago, we developed an Agent Desktop for our call center that is essentially a local application that opens sockets to integrate with the phone system. The user interface the agents use is built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and the experience is stunning. When we released our latest update in 2010 with a professional CSS redesign, our agents were all very impressed with not only how easy it was to interact but also how easy it was to use.
In the future we will port this 100% to the browser, but for now it needs to be a local application because of the COM integration with the phone system.
We did exactly this for a project back when Windows XP was new.
This gave my team several benefits:
A good-looking UI with relatively little effort
Easily change the style of the UI in a consistent manner using CSS
Relatively simple integration with C++ (invoking functions from the ui and vice versa)
The drawbacks we saw were:
Some not-so-good firewalls considered accessing internal resources (ie other html pages in the ui) to be a web request
Adding and accessing the needed resources could in some cases be a bit cumbersome
It was possible set properties in Internet Explorer that would prevent JS from running in the application
Note that some of Windows XP:s programs are using this approach.
This probably works best with small, more Wizard-like parts of the ui (which our ui consisted almost entirely of).
I have since then not really been involved in ui projects, so I cannot really tell you whether this approach is still valid... I know that MFC-based applications will let you use HTML-based dialogs though.
In a similar situation in 2005 I created a stand-alone webapp using XForms, CSS, JavaScript, XML and XML Schema for offline data retrieval and verification. With a good XForms -> HTML + JS transformer (Chiba) it did the job with no bug fixes after the initial release. It was used for 6-12 months (IIRC) by about a dozen engineers for a project gathering test data in the tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider. The biggest surprise of that project was just how much you get for free when going for a web platform, even for offline use. Highly recommended.
The major problem is that it reduces your development speed, or the quality of your user interface. A lot. Unless you're using Seaside, it is much faster to develop a desktop app.
There is quite some number of applications built on top of Mozilla platform. It isn't 100% web technology, as instead of HTML you use XML based XUL, but the rest is indeed web stack (JavaScript, CSS). The most successful of these it the OpenKomodo and it's commercial big brother Komodo IDE.
On the other hand, as far as Qt goes, the newest version 4.7 you can build GUI using QML language. Don't let the name mislead you, it's not markup, it acctually JavaScript with app-specific extensions.
I'd like to get some feedback and references to any useful resources related to iTunes integration on Windows platform from fellow developers experienced in that area. COM SDK vs. JavaScript API? What are the advantages and limitations? Any useful blogs or discussion groups? Any recommended outsourced vendors experienced in this type of work? What would be involved in developing an application with features similar to simplifymedia.com?
Any information on the topic is appreciated!
I built a WebForms app in ASP.NET on my workstation using the COM SDK. It was extremely easy and I would recommend using the COM SDK for compiled code or VBScripting.
I would use a JavaScript API if you're doing a simple web app or sidebar gadget or something like that.
The APIs are defined for different domains.
And from my experience with the COM SDK, using it was extremely simple and easy, but I was just doing something simple.
Has anyone had experience with developing web apps using ClearQuest? Looking at the features, it mentions process automation but I'm not sure how large of a process/application it can support. Our group gave up a small section of a larger application to another group that used ClearQuest to web-enabled the process but now the ClearQuest tools are being pushed on us to web-enable the entire application. I have a ASP.NET background but ClearQuest is very wizard like and the only code that I've seen is called "BASIC" and it looks a lot like VBScript.
Clearcase/Clearquest has decent integration with Rational Applicaiton Developer. I am not sure if you arsking about its strenghts or actually exposing ClearQuest to the web. You can do the obligatory and lame activity of writing CGI/PERL scripts to expose some of the features to the web. You can use perl or VBScript to write CC/CQ hooks. It has its own perl build included in the product called ratperl. It has fantastic command line support but it comes at a price of complexity. CC/CQ is very powerful provided you think about the implementation in your organization very carefully. It can support very powerful work flows and is highly customizable.
There are several APIs which allow you to do what you want, write a WebApp.
CQWeb itself is built using the CM API, which allows a Java application (web or non-web) to be build. A tutorial is here:
http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSSH5A_9.0.0/com.ibm.rational.team_api_cq_tut.doc/topics/teamapi_cq_abstract.htm
You could implement a basic web application using perl-CGI, since CQ has a Perl API.
You can write an ASP/C# web application because ClearQuest has a OLE (Visual Basic) API. The original ClearQuest Web application was built using the Visual Basic API
So the answer is yes, it is possible.
Wouldn't it be nice it supported a JavaScript API? Then we could write nodeJS CQ applications.
Sure it's possible, for a VS style integration I would either wrap the cqole.dll or use the OSLC connectors to get access to the RESTful interface. While the cqole is the C++ API and it is not officially supported this will suite you better than trying to implement this with the VBScript API. If you are more comfortable with just using the web services I would check out jazz.net where the wiki explains the bridge in gory details.
You dont exactly develop webapp with ClearQuest, CQ is only a process automation tool that build on logic and state transitions, and the interactions are scripted in either VBScript or Perl.
However do note that it has always been a pain to manage CQ codes as the "Designer" itself is a completely broken tool. It supports version tracking but doesnt tell u the difference between versions. The built-in code editor doesnt have syntax highligting, and it doesnt support parallel development. I can go on and on.
In the later versions, (version 7 onwards I supposed), CQ comes with eclipse based client AND designer tools, which supposedly enhance the whole experience. But I dont have too much experience with it to comment.
As for the web component, it runs on the websphere layer and simply is a application/presentation layer for users to access CQ through a HTTP protocol. It has 90% of the features of a full CQ client, and is usually easier to maintain and deploy to a wide user group.
Check out http://open-services.net/ for information on development using Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration.