New CAB option for NetTiers

Hi guys,

In the last few nightly drops, there's been the addition of the WinForms library which provides User Controls for each table (basically for doing table maintenance and all that jazz, much like the admin controls in the website). This is cool and grand, but we needed more ;)

We're using NT with CAB and so after a presentation today about using NT, it made sense to build a similar modification to the templates to create CAB aware SmartParts in NT. So I've started this work now and will release it to the group for anyone who wants it (hopefully it'll cut the mustard to make it into NetTiers itself).

Here's the idea behind the design and what I'm building:

• Class library based on a Business Module from SCSF
• One view, presenter, and user control (SmartPart) for each table (same as WinForm library)
• ModuleInit and ModuleController classes and other CAB stuff generated
• Separate configuration section to enable CAB generation, location of CAB dlls, namespaces, etc.
• Option to host all SmartParts inside a deck or tab workspace (so the output of this could simply be dropped into a CAB project as a module)

Let me know if there's interest in this, what features you might want/need. I'll provide a version of this once I've given it the once over testing and setup some kind of way to get feedback to get changes put into the modification. Note that this is *not* a replacement for SCSF but something to generate a single module you can use for direct table maintenance but done CAB style using user controls and the MVP pattern.

Thanks!

Hi,

This would be awesome!  Did you see the stuff that John did for CAB?  I know it's not complete, but are you talking about extending these classes to support more?
http://nettiers.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/nettiers/source/trunk/Source/CAB/
 

I agree, this would be a great addition.

swin

Robert Hinojosa:

This would be awesome!  Did you see the stuff that John did for CAB?  I know it's not complete, but are you talking about extending these classes to support more?
http://nettiers.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/nettiers/source/trunk/Source/CAB/

Hi Robert,

I looked at the stuff for CAB but it seems to generate a workitem and it's not included in the config so not sure how it was meant to be integrated. Like I said, the main design idea I'm flowing from is similar to the WinForm library that was added as this would be an entire new configuration section and essentially create a new CAB module that you could just compile, drop into your solution, and add to the ProfileCatalog.xml and use out of the box.

Hi,

 This would be a very VERY interesting feature indeed :-)

I hear you, I'm just trying to make sure that there's no duplication of effort, if it can be avoided.  But yes, I believe we're all for it. 

bsimser:

Hi Robert,

I looked at the stuff for CAB but it seems to generate a workitem and it's not included in the config so not sure how it was meant to be integrated. Like I said, the main design idea I'm flowing from is similar to the WinForm library that was added as this would be an entire new configuration section and essentially create a new CAB module that you could just compile, drop into your solution, and add to the ProfileCatalog.xml and use out of the box.

hi

yes ur right, my CAB templates are not meant to be merged but to be used separately to generate entity based workitem when needed.
I found it to be very usefull because my applications need a lot of customization so i cannot use generated forms...
but your idea is great and you should continue and integrate them in the repository.

 about the winforms controls: i use them during the developpement phase, it allow me to have the basic form working event if the fully customized replacement is not yet developped.

 tell me if I can help

So when do you think u'd have this ready?

I can hardly wait for something like this, and I can give it a whirl as soon as you have it available.  We already make heavy use of CAB, so I could take it for a spin. 

Hi all,

It's been some time we are talking and asking questions about 'How To Use SCSF (or CAB) with NetTiers' ?... Many of us seem interested with this subject and I think the answer is quite simple:

• NetTiers provides a neat and beautifully designed approach for N-Tiers layered applications.
  
• CAB/SCSF provide such a neat approach for the another essential part of application design : UI interactions
  

So it seems quite natural that most people looking for NetTiers are also interested in SCSF development.

So, I created this post to allow everybody who's interested in this subject to let the NetTiers community know about their presence and their expectations. Maybe, it would be possible to bring up a new kind of 'sub community' talking about SCSF questions using NetTiers, that would be useful ! But therefore we would need help from advanced guys.

So please, answer to this post if you are interested and present in two words your project.

Thank's for reading...

Mike. 

Hi,

I am very interested in guidelines and best practices for that.

Miketrix:

So, I created this post to allow everybody who's interested in this subject to let the NetTiers community know about their presence and their expectations. Maybe, it would be possible to bring up a new kind of 'sub community' talking about SCSF questions using NetTiers, that would be useful ! But therefore we would need help from advanced guys.

We're heading down this road now.  We've just started a prototype project for a web based administration tool for a new CRM product using NetTiers, but the end user functionality will be a smart client integrated with another application.  We haven't done any work at all on the smart client piece, just starting to take a look at options for authentication and security now.

I thought I read a couple of threads last night about people who've got patches that integrate WSE3 security features into the templates, I'm off to see if I can find more about that today.

Mark

I have already expressed some of my experiences with CAB and .NetTiers, and I've anxiously read all of the postings about integrating .NetTiers and CAB/SCSF.

There have been some posts about integrating some basic CAB functionality into the templates, but it seems that this effort has come to a halt based on the nightly releases (the CAB sections haven't been updated in a while.).  Is that effort still going on?  Anything we can help with? 

Is there anyone that used the CAB templates? I would like to see an example of how it works.

I'm starting to develop a windows app using CAB, SCSF+Contrib, Infragistics and netTiers. Anyone has any experience that they can share?