I need to know if is possible to implement design patterns in genexus (e.g prototype or singleton) and how.
Genexus is a software, which helps you design your code. So you describe your business requirements, and it is the responsibility of this software to generate the code.
"Design Patterns" are used during designing, so it is best left to this designing software to use it.
we are kind of in a ‘decision making situation’ to make a road map of our BI system.
I would like to hear experts opinion on Information Builders when compared to Oracle BI. I am working in Oracle BI but I dont have knowledge on Webfocus offered by Information Builders, so problably users who has knowledge on both sides, has a good overview on pros and cons.
Like to hear any opinion or suggestion.
Thanks in advance.
I currently work with IBI products and their reporting language WebFocus 8. This along with their new AppStudio development tool and BI Portal deployment platform. If you like being forced to use a GUI to build your user-facing components, having no good access to the HTML, then go with IBI and WF. Other than their having forced the developer to lose access to edit HTML, and tool generated code being horrid, it's a fairly good product. Their new push for responsive design is still early in its implementation. Lots of restrictions and good portions of their products rely on being both compatible with IE8 or used in IE. Not much of a fan of IBI.
I have requirement of preparing an in-house Project Management and accounting app using Microsoft Dynamics. My requirements are similar to what explained in the below page:
http://community.dynamics.com/product/crm/f/117/p/54453/98182.aspx
Can someone suggest that should we use ERP or CRM? And which one to use i.e. SL, GP, NAV, AX? And why?
CRM is probably the first choice to eliminate. Project management is usually an internally facing application, while CRM is by definition, externally facing. Secondly, if you need to maintain budgets, Dynamics CRM doesn't have anything built in for this (a general ledger for example).
As for the others, each will have its own costs and the extent of support you can get for any of them will vary depending on where your business is located. In some areas you may be able to get good SL support but no NAV or AX for example.
As for one you may not have considered, have you considered Project Server / SharePoint? If you need really heavy weight PM capability, Project may be your best bet. SharePoint can do some PM stuff. There's at least one book around by Dux Raymond Sy, published by O'Reilly. He's also done at least one webcast. Both are based on SharePoint 2007.
HTH
Of the Dynamics ERP products, SL is the one most focused on the project management (i.e. Project Accounting) space. CRM doesn't have a lot of project management capabilities built in, but is probably the most customisable and extendable of the dynamics range.
If you're after something that needs to cover the financial aspect of PM (e.g. billing, tracking costs etc) then you should look at the ERP options. If you're not worried about the financial side, then building a custom solution within CRM might be an option.
Came across this thread in a search I was doing. Hope Sukhminder Singh is still listening...
Sounds like you shouldn't abandon Dynamics CRM, a tool which your organization has tried and tested for nurturing customer satisfaction and turning it into ongoing revenue. On the other hand, you need to maintain a smooth accounting and billing relationship with the same customers - and for that, you'll need an ERP solution. As ccellar suggested NAV can do that, or even SharePoint, as suggested by Mike. I'll hazard a guess your organization already has SharePoint, too.
Now, what about the integration? You know, devising an effective, scalable, and future-proof way for getting MS folk to "talk" is quite a challenge! Also, you need a solution that places stress on human, as well as system workflows. The human factor can be decisive in time-critical projects.
Sukhminder, are you going to be coding solutions on either end? That's one way to go, though often, that option comes with high overheads: dragged-out coding projects, functionality that can be difficult to maintain, and even harder to modify, and serious concerns when one of the systems is upgraded or replaced.
From another angle--are you considering BPM? I'd urge you to.
BPM (Business Process Management) software suites are becoming an increasingly practical and mainstream option as an organization's central integration hub. BPM lets you rapidly map out and control mission critical processes involving multiple systems (as in your scenario). BPM lets you visualize the players, processes and apps over time, and when it comes to adjusting, remapping, and remodeling your workflows, you may have to do some coding, but a large part of the work can be done by experienced, non-programmer BPM users.
There are a bunch of vendors out there, each with its own pros and cons. For the job of connecting MS CRM and MS ERP/Sharepoint, here are 3 candidates I have come across.
Kofax's TotalAgility BMP integrates between Dynamics CRM and SharePoint, by leveraging SharePoint capabilities. The solution obviates elaborate coding by supporting workflows, rules, and user screens. It "orchestrates" processes between itself and other MS and products, most notably SharePoint, CRM, Lync, Visio, Outlook. They enable "in-flight" process change and dynamic BPM, so that down-time on your production is minimal. See the data sheet.
Sequence Business Process Management from PNMsoft. Provides integration with systems from many vendors. The forte is on human-centric processes, with a strong bent for Microsoft products. Sequence lets you integrate with existing systems using wizard-based connectors. When your organization changes, Sequence lets you "hot-swap" your business processes fast, without down time in your production.
MuleSoft's CRM-ERP integration. Their strong point is application integration, for connecting (legacy) systems from a range of vendors, including SAP, Oracle, Salesforce.com, and MS. The Mule ESB is a lightweight integration platform. It comes with a library of connectors to quickly create connectivity with all systems and services, whether on-premise or in the cloud. When adding or modifying an endpoint, you can easily update your integrations to reflect the change.
HTH some....
I'd start off at the Microsoft Dynamics site and explore what each product has on offer. They even have an ERP selector tool for you to try out with just a few questions. Why not contact Microsoft yourself and they could provide a list of potential partners that work in your area - it will be an important decision and they would better guide you through the selection process.
After a few projects which also had an accounting part, I would not recommend to use Dynamics CRM (at least for the accounting part). That's not what it's meant for and you have to spend much effort to get to a level of Dynamics NAV for example.
On the other side: why not combine both systems and use their strenghts.
I'm a junior VB.net developer with little application design knowledge. I've been reading a lot of material online regarding different design patterns, frameworks, and methodologies. It's become a bit confusing for me.
Right now I'm trying to decide on what language would be best suited to convert an existing VB6 application (with SQL server backend.) I need to update the UI and add more user functionality and reporting capabilities. Initially I was thinking of using WPF and attempting the MVVM model for this big project. Reports would be generated from SSRS.
A peer suggested using ASP.net and I don't have enough experience to determine what would be better. The senior programmers here are stuck on using VB6 and don't have any input on what to use. They are encouraging me to use the latest technologies.
This application would be for ~20 users in a central location. Ideally I would stick to a Microsoft .net language. Current interface is similar to a datagrid table where the user would click in to see the detail of each record. They would need to have multiple records open at any given time.
I look forward to all the advice I can get.
EDIT 2010/04/22 2:47 PM EST
What is your audience? Internal clients within an intranet
How complex are the interactions you expect to implement? not very... displaying data from SQL server to UI. Allow user updates to said data. Typically just one user modifying a record.
Do you require near real-time data updates? no
How often do you expect to update the application after the first release? twice/year
Do you expect a well-defined set of client platforms? Yes, windows xp environment, potentially upgrading to Win7. Currently in IE.6 moving to IE7 or 8 within a couple of months.
Do users need access from anywhere? No, just from their PC.
What would be wrong about building a simple ASP.Net application in VB.Net using Gridviews for allowing the data access and manipulation? Seems like a simple ADO.Net trial application if you aren't familiar with it in the beginning you will be by the end. CRUD applications are pretty common so it shouldn't be too hard to build it and then refine it as more requirements become apparent.
Sounds like you need to use a web-based solution--this eliminates alot of your potential distribution woes with multiple users. You could use silverlight, but if you are locked into SSRS, this might not be the way to go.
Has anyone created a .NET control architecture using the taligent programming model as follows?
http://www.wildcrest.com/Potel/Portfolio/mvp.pdf
As stated by IBM -
MVP will enable IBM to deliver a unified conceptual programming model across all its major object-oriented language environments
The question is how do you implement or map the IInteractor concept (Page 9) to a .NET interface? Currently the guess is to use the IInputElement interface as a the event source for all UI input controls.
If anyone has already implemented the taligent pattern in .NET, I would like to know if it is applies to both Silverlight and WPF. If so, does it apply to the union of their interfaces?
Finally this represents the unified abstract architecture and can displace PresentationFramework.dll. If you see this applies as a control architecture, please comment.
That depends on what you mean by ".net". The term covers many kinds of applications. Web apps, Web Services, Windows Forms apps, WPF apps, etc...
MVP is used a lot in ASP.NET Web apps. See:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc188690.aspx
The article How to: Implement the Model-View-Presenter Pattern of the MSDN patterns & practices section seams to be what you are looking for...
We have created a complete MVP framework for .NET, based on the Taligent ideas. It took us some time to get right but now we can create applications by writing business classes, creating a new form and drag-dropping the properties of a class onto the form.
The framework is very sophisticated and allows for the customisation of forms at runtime, as well as automatically hooking up validation in the business classes to edits on the form.
We also wrote an OPF (Object Persistence Framework) to complement it, so avoiding the need to manage database code as well.