Joel just blogged about this on my team blog with a curious title of “If you are a government developer please read this”:
Any “enterprise” customer really should read this guide and start thinking about moving towards a clams-based approach. Furthermore, if you want to move your apps to the cloud, then a claims-based approach is a no brainer. In most cases, it is a must!
Prism is:
“The Composite Client Application Guidance is designed to help you more easily build modular Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight client applications.”
What most people find, once they take the time to dig in to Prism, is that it is MUCH more. Prism has guidance on how to build an app that targets both Silverlight & WPF, has some plumbing that makes MVVM easier in Silverlight apps by providing a basic commanding implementation, etc. However, the learning curve to get proficient with Prism can be a turnoff for some. Even once you “get it,” you then realize that there is a fair amount of Visual Studio solution/project setup just to get to the point of being able to start building your parts of the application. The good news is that David Hill has just released some templates for Visual Studio 2008 to make the basic setup for your Prism based apps much easier:
http://blogs.msdn.com/dphill/archive/2009/05/29/prism-quick-start-kit.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/dphill/archive/2009/06/15/prism-quick-start-kit-update.aspx
I just went through the walkthrough in the first link. Here is what you get after the “Prism Shell” and “Prism Module” templates:
You get the skeleton of a basic composite application using MVVM. I think this is a big time saver. I will definitely be keeping an eye out as David evolves the templates / quick start kit.
UPDATE: I was so excited to share my discovery of David’s work that I forgot to add a few more helpful resources I have found:
If you have not heard the announcement elsewhere, Enterprise Library 4.0 from patterns & practices is now available. Martin Bennedik just updated his WPF integration for the Validation Application Block (VAB) to work with Enterprise Library 4.0. He has also added some very convenient features. This is a MUST HAVE if you are looking to use VAB for validation of your business objects/entities. The ErrorProvider from Martin makes surfacing the errors in your WPF UI so easy!
As I mentioned here, I have been digging into what’s out there for WPF LOB applications. It’s been a long time since I’ve kept up with the work the patterns & practices group has produced. One of the things I’ve seen a webcast/blog post or two about is the Validation Application Block. They have put together a nice approach that allows you to define validation once on your business entities. In addition, the block includes adapters that allow you to surface the validation in ASP.NET, Windows Forms, and the Windows Communications Framework (WCF). In theory, the block can be used with WPF as well, but an adapter hasn’t been built. I came across two solutions. The first one, Validation Application Block, meet WPF, I found on Tom Hollander’s blog. The other, came from one of the EntLib Contrib projects on CodePlex. The project is called Standalone Validation Block. It’s two gems in one! First, it allows you to use the core validation framework without having to take a dependency on the full Enterprise Library. Second, it has a solution for surfacing the validation in your WPF UI. Go check it out!
During the recent Public Sector Developer Conference in Washington, DC, I was asked about tools support, beyond the class designer, for modeling WCF services. My answer was to use the Service Factory Modeling Edition for Visual Studio 2008 from the patterns & practices team. Here’s a quick screenshot of what the design surface looks like:
You will also want to check out the community site at http://www.codeplex.com/servicefactory. The community site contains hands-on labs for both using and extending the Service Factory, discussions with customers and field, known issues, and roadmap information. In the near future the site will include presentations, demonstration videos, and community contributions.
Gold Coast 