Best approach for web and windows based flavors

[Guest]

Greetings,

I will be developing an application that will have two versions, a web
application to be deployed at the client side and a windows application.

The question is, what would be the best approach for developing these two
versions reusing code as much as possible?. Is there a best practice for this
type of development?

I have read about User Interface Application Block, but I don't know at this
point if that is a good fit.

Any comments, suggestions?

 

[Guest]

Yes there is a best approach fro developing in these kinds of situations.
Use the Model View Controller pattern. This basicly means that you should
keep your data your interface and the logic seperated.

Microsoft has a user interface application block which is probably overkill
but the pdf that is included in this block does explain the thought behind
the code.

It's good reading material.

Bye,

 

[Guest]

Hi David,

Sorry I didn't read your question good enough, you already read the user
interface application block.

Let me think, if you need more information for your application architecture.
You can keep on reading ofcourse there is a good book that explains patterns
If you read it completly you will understand the Model View Controller
pattern also (It's the last pattern in the book). Head first design patterns
(Java book).
And you can ofcourse hire a good consultant to get the project underway, try
Microsoft consultancy services. Let them take a look at your design papers,
this is a verry educational experiance.

Bye,

--
Rainier van Slingerlandt
(Freelance trainer/consultant/developer)
www.slingerlandt.com

 

[Guest]

Thanks Rainier,

I'll continue to read those patterns and see whether it seems reasonable to
apply them to my projects.

At first sight it seems the UIP Application Block is a little too complex
and instead of easing things for developing both versions, could end up
introducing more compexity on them. I know it could be better on the long
run, because of maintenance advantages, but, with the time constraint, I
don´t know if there is time for the learning curve associated with its
implementation.

David.

 

[Radek Cerny]

We do this very successfully by using Web Services. We have a rich but thin
client that consumes the services, AJAX code that consumes them and gives
you field-at-a-time processing in a browser and ASP.NET pages that
consolidate a pages worth of data and submit it. As a bonus, the .NET
Compact Framework gives us a PDA client which we are using on devices like
the O2 XDA II. The services are quite generic - there are only a few, but
one of the parameters is an XML document which contains a description of the
request (eg <Field name="CustomerAddress" value="123 Some St"/>) and the
response is an XML document which contains the sum of the changes the server
has made based on business rules executed. In fact, as another bonus, its
B2B ready and fits in well with SOA.

Note this is a home-baked solution- we dont use much (any?) of the MS
provided architectural stuff.

Radek