need advice on big project

[dave]

well, big for us anyway... 2 developers, 1 year. I am looking for general
good approaches for handling this. Given VS 2008, a collection of some old
legacy code, and 2 man years we need to build a new front end that allows
users to manage a library of components that can then be built into
assemblies, that can then be built into models of designs or real systems
that are then analyzed by the legacy code and compared with performance
requirements... the performance requirements are also user managed.
conceptualy i see this as several collections of generic objects that could
be handled in something like a tree control with drag and drop to build
bigger assemblies.. one problem is we want to give the user the capability to
define groupings and create new assemblies and models, so any tree we use has
to be flexible enough to be user extended, much like is done in xml pad or
windows explorer.

I have been looking at WPF and it's trees, maybe driven by an xml backend.
But am wondering if that is a good way to go, or should we go with more
direct c# code with either xml or access database behind it? Should we look
at the desktop sql server? I have much more experience with access databases
and am kind of struggling with how to model trees of user definable
components and bigger assemblies in xml. This has a possibility of being
something that could be shared by multiple engineers in a corporate
environment, so maybe a full sql server back end makes sense? How hard would
migration from desktop access or sql be to a full server environment if we
get to that point?

Too many questions, not enough time... anyone got some good pointers? Any
good demos or tools out there that already do this type of user definable
component/assembly/bigger assembly framework??

 

[Mr. Arnold]

well, big for us anyway... 2 developers, 1 year. I am looking for general
good approaches for handling this. Given VS 2008, a collection of some
old
legacy code, and 2 man years we need to build a new front end that allows
users to manage a library of components that can then be built into
assemblies, that can then be built into models of designs or real systems
that are then analyzed by the legacy code and compared with performance
requirements... the performance requirements are also user managed.
conceptualy i see this as several collections of generic objects that
could
be handled in something like a tree control with drag and drop to build
bigger assemblies.. one problem is we want to give the user the capability
to
define groupings and create new assemblies and models, so any tree we use
has
to be flexible enough to be user extended, much like is done in xml pad or
windows explorer.

I have been looking at WPF and it's trees, maybe driven by an xml backend.
But am wondering if that is a good way to go, or should we go with more
direct c# code with either xml or access database behind it? Should we
look
at the desktop sql server? I have much more experience with access
databases
and am kind of struggling with how to model trees of user definable
components and bigger assemblies in xml. This has a possibility of being
something that could be shared by multiple engineers in a corporate
environment, so maybe a full sql server back end makes sense? How hard
would
migration from desktop access or sql be to a full server environment if we
get to that point?

Too many questions, not enough time... anyone got some good pointers? Any
good demos or tools out there that already do this type of user definable
component/assembly/bigger assembly framework??

You might want to look into the following:

1) Linq in general that can work with XML, objects, collections, datasets,
databases or in general, anything that can be queried and do simple CRUD
operations against.

2) Backend of MS SQL Server with either using Linq-2-SQL, ADO.NET Entity
Framework Link-2-Entities or nHibernate.

3) Windows Communication Foundation as the communication means between
multiple clients/server backend environment interactions.

4) Windows Workflow to control the user's flow of work, validate user
activities and validate objects before objects are persisted to the
datastore.

5) Domain Driven Design (DDD) concepts, along with Test Driven Design (TDD)
tools.



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[Mr. Arnold]

well, big for us anyway... 2 developers, 1 year. I am looking for general
good approaches for handling this. Given VS 2008, a collection of some
old
legacy code, and 2 man years we need to build a new front end that allows
users to manage a library of components that can then be built into
assemblies, that can then be built into models of designs or real systems
that are then analyzed by the legacy code and compared with performance
requirements... the performance requirements are also user managed.
conceptualy i see this as several collections of generic objects that
could
be handled in something like a tree control with drag and drop to build
bigger assemblies.. one problem is we want to give the user the capability
to
define groupings and create new assemblies and models, so any tree we use
has
to be flexible enough to be user extended, much like is done in xml pad or
windows explorer.

I have been looking at WPF and it's trees, maybe driven by an xml backend.
But am wondering if that is a good way to go, or should we go with more
direct c# code with either xml or access database behind it? Should we
look
at the desktop sql server? I have much more experience with access
databases
and am kind of struggling with how to model trees of user definable
components and bigger assemblies in xml. This has a possibility of being
something that could be shared by multiple engineers in a corporate
environment, so maybe a full sql server back end makes sense? How hard
would
migration from desktop access or sql be to a full server environment if we
get to that point?

Too many questions, not enough time... anyone got some good pointers? Any
good demos or tools out there that already do this type of user definable
component/assembly/bigger assembly framework??

You might want to look into the following:

1) Linq in general that can work with XML, objects, collections, datasets,
databases or in general, anything that can be queried and do simple CRUD
operations against.

2) Backend of MS SQL Server with either using Linq-2-SQL, ADO.NET Entity
Framework Link-2-Entities or nHibernate.

3) Windows Communication Foundation as the communication means between
multiple clients/server backend environment interactions.

4) Windows Workflow to control the user's flow of work, validate user
activities and validate objects before objects are persisted to the
datastore.

5) Domain Driven Design (DDD) concepts, along with Test Driven Design (TDD)
tools.



__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4063 (20090508) __________

The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.

http://www.eset.com

 

[dave]

You might want to look into the following:

1) Linq in general that can work with XML, objects, collections, datasets,
databases or in general, anything that can be queried and do simple CRUD
operations against.

2) Backend of MS SQL Server with either using Linq-2-SQL, ADO.NET Entity
Framework Link-2-Entities or nHibernate.

3) Windows Communication Foundation as the communication means between
multiple clients/server backend environment interactions.

4) Windows Workflow to control the user's flow of work, validate user
activities and validate objects before objects are persisted to the
datastore.

5) Domain Driven Design (DDD) concepts, along with Test Driven Design
(TDD) tools.

thanks the Linq info looks interesting, sure looks like it makes handling
xml easier than the regular dom stuff. i haven't looked at the workflow
stuff yet, does it do forms and how does it integrate with xml data? i have
looked a bit at wpf which looks nice for forms and controls, but seems a bit
light on validation and control.

 

[dave]

You might want to look into the following:

1) Linq in general that can work with XML, objects, collections, datasets,
databases or in general, anything that can be queried and do simple CRUD
operations against.

2) Backend of MS SQL Server with either using Linq-2-SQL, ADO.NET Entity
Framework Link-2-Entities or nHibernate.

3) Windows Communication Foundation as the communication means between
multiple clients/server backend environment interactions.

4) Windows Workflow to control the user's flow of work, validate user
activities and validate objects before objects are persisted to the
datastore.

5) Domain Driven Design (DDD) concepts, along with Test Driven Design
(TDD) tools.

thanks the Linq info looks interesting, sure looks like it makes handling
xml easier than the regular dom stuff. i haven't looked at the workflow
stuff yet, does it do forms and how does it integrate with xml data? i have
looked a bit at wpf which looks nice for forms and controls, but seems a bit
light on validation and control.

 

[Mr. Arnold]

thanks the Linq info looks interesting, sure looks like it makes handling
xml easier than the regular dom stuff. i haven't looked at the workflow
stuff yet, does it do forms and how does it integrate with xml data? i
have looked a bit at wpf which looks nice for forms and controls, but
seems a bit light on validation and control.

Workflow can control Windows forms, WPF, and the user actions at the UI.
WF does work with XML, but the implementation in how you would use XML
with WF you will have to discover it.




__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4063 (20090508) __________

The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.

http://www.eset.com

 

[Mr. Arnold]

thanks the Linq info looks interesting, sure looks like it makes handling
xml easier than the regular dom stuff. i haven't looked at the workflow
stuff yet, does it do forms and how does it integrate with xml data? i
have looked a bit at wpf which looks nice for forms and controls, but
seems a bit light on validation and control.

Workflow can control Windows forms, WPF, and the user actions at the UI.
WF does work with XML, but the implementation in how you would use XML
with WF you will have to discover it.




__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4063 (20090508) __________

The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.

http://www.eset.com