Before the Composite Application Block

Hello,

Ive been looking at the Patterns practises site. The UI App Block appears to
have been phased out. Although you can access it the tone appears to be
"dont - theres something better". But the only other "thing" i can find is
the CAB. This appears to be quite a heavy weight solution.

Is there anything in the middle for a comparatively simple standalone CRM
solution? Should we be just be looking towards the Enterprise library and
rolling our own from there? The CAB looks like it could be useful in long
term future. i.e. a standalone CRM kinda sounds like a contridiction in
terms.... so plugging into other apps and services will be an obvious
evolution... but again the tone of the CAB seems very Fortune 500 and heavy
weight.

Any thoughts appreciated.

Richard

That's the problem with much of MS's half-hearted aftermarket efforts
(there's hardly ever any follow-through). You might want to look at this:
http://www.codeplex.com/appexplore
It's essentially a template that contains all the plumbing for building
modular UI's without tieing you down to a stifling framework or deriving
your forms from some base class. It supports tabbed MDI (like the tabs in
Visual Studio) and a bunch of other stuff.

It's completely open source. You can modify it however way you see fit.

"Richard Coltrane" <rc@spamsux.com> wrote in message
news:ecV8CaeQIHA.5160@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Hello,
>
> Ive been looking at the Patterns practises site. The UI App Block appears
> to have been phased out. Although you can access it the tone appears to be
> "dont - theres something better". But the only other "thing" i can find is
> the CAB. This appears to be quite a heavy weight solution.
>
> Is there anything in the middle for a comparatively simple standalone CRM
> solution? Should we be just be looking towards the Enterprise library and
> rolling our own from there? The CAB looks like it could be useful in long
> term future. i.e. a standalone CRM kinda sounds like a contridiction in
> terms.... so plugging into other apps and services will be an obvious
> evolution... but again the tone of the CAB seems very Fortune 500 and
> heavy weight.
>
> Any thoughts appreciated.
>
> Richard
>

Hi There,

Thanks for that, I will look it over. I actually skimmed over that yesterday
when i was at CodePlex looking through the open source componentry. I just
assumed, given its name, that is was some kinda WindowsExplorer type shell
and therefore not something I was interested in.

To be fair to the CAB there is actually quite a lot of info..... but they
(patterns website) dont have a very good roadmap IMHO around these
frameworks. If i have to roll my own then fine and blocks like the
Enterprise Library offer some great base assets.... but its the tone of the
site. It suggests to me they have got us and our middle ground covered with
"something, somewhere" but what and where that "thing" is I dont know.

I appreciate this is architecture/design and therefore something that
requires a decent level of consideration but frankly I like a good tabular
graphic (or some other structure) to show where things fit. Even if a cell
is left blank, such as for the seeming middle ground between Enterprise
Library and CAB, then that in itself provides a lot of info. i.e roll your
own.

I'll muddle through it because that's my job but sometimes it does feel like
they have you chasing ghosts.

Thanks

Richard

"CMoya" <moy@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:C2584CC9-926F-4687-93EE-D583F1932D95@microsoft.com...
> That's the problem with much of MS's half-hearted aftermarket efforts
> (there's hardly ever any follow-through). You might want to look at this:
> http://www.codeplex.com/appexplore
> It's essentially a template that contains all the plumbing for building
> modular UI's without tieing you down to a stifling framework or deriving
> your forms from some base class. It supports tabbed MDI (like the tabs in
> Visual Studio) and a bunch of other stuff.
>
> It's completely open source. You can modify it however way you see fit.
>
> "Richard Coltrane" <rc@spamsux.com> wrote in message
> news:ecV8CaeQIHA.5160@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>> Hello,
>>
>> Ive been looking at the Patterns practises site. The UI App Block appears
>> to have been phased out. Although you can access it the tone appears to
>> be "dont - theres something better". But the only other "thing" i can
>> find is the CAB. This appears to be quite a heavy weight solution.
>>
>> Is there anything in the middle for a comparatively simple standalone CRM
>> solution? Should we be just be looking towards the Enterprise library and
>> rolling our own from there? The CAB looks like it could be useful in long
>> term future. i.e. a standalone CRM kinda sounds like a contridiction in
>> terms.... so plugging into other apps and services will be an obvious
>> evolution... but again the tone of the CAB seems very Fortune 500 and
>> heavy weight.
>>
>> Any thoughts appreciated.
>>
>> Richard
>>
>

Although it is a shell (around your child forms) it has nothing to with
Windows Explorer or Internet Explorer.

"Richard Coltrane" <rc@spamsux.com> wrote in message
news:up8TYMpQIHA.3940@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Hi There,
>
> Thanks for that, I will look it over. I actually skimmed over that
> yesterday when i was at CodePlex looking through the open source
> componentry. I just assumed, given its name, that is was some kinda
> WindowsExplorer type shell and therefore not something I was interested
> in.
>
> To be fair to the CAB there is actually quite a lot of info..... but they
> (patterns website) dont have a very good roadmap IMHO around these
> frameworks. If i have to roll my own then fine and blocks like the
> Enterprise Library offer some great base assets.... but its the tone of
> the site. It suggests to me they have got us and our middle ground covered
> with "something, somewhere" but what and where that "thing" is I dont
> know.
>
> I appreciate this is architecture/design and therefore something that
> requires a decent level of consideration but frankly I like a good tabular
> graphic (or some other structure) to show where things fit. Even if a cell
> is left blank, such as for the seeming middle ground between Enterprise
> Library and CAB, then that in itself provides a lot of info. i.e roll your
> own.
>
> I'll muddle through it because that's my job but sometimes it does feel
> like they have you chasing ghosts.
>
> Thanks
>
> Richard
>
> "CMoya" <moy@nospam.com> wrote in message
> news:C2584CC9-926F-4687-93EE-D583F1932D95@microsoft.com...
>> That's the problem with much of MS's half-hearted aftermarket efforts
>> (there's hardly ever any follow-through). You might want to look at this:
>> http://www.codeplex.com/appexplore
>> It's essentially a template that contains all the plumbing for building
>> modular UI's without tieing you down to a stifling framework or deriving
>> your forms from some base class. It supports tabbed MDI (like the tabs in
>> Visual Studio) and a bunch of other stuff.
>>
>> It's completely open source. You can modify it however way you see fit.
>>
>> "Richard Coltrane" <rc@spamsux.com> wrote in message
>> news:ecV8CaeQIHA.5160@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> Ive been looking at the Patterns practises site. The UI App Block
>>> appears to have been phased out. Although you can access it the tone
>>> appears to be "dont - theres something better". But the only other
>>> "thing" i can find is the CAB. This appears to be quite a heavy weight
>>> solution.
>>>
>>> Is there anything in the middle for a comparatively simple standalone
>>> CRM solution? Should we be just be looking towards the Enterprise
>>> library and rolling our own from there? The CAB looks like it could be
>>> useful in long term future. i.e. a standalone CRM kinda sounds like a
>>> contridiction in terms.... so plugging into other apps and services will
>>> be an obvious evolution... but again the tone of the CAB seems very
>>> Fortune 500 and heavy weight.
>>>
>>> Any thoughts appreciated.
>>>
>>> Richard
>>>
>>
>
>