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DevForce vs other products and your satisfaction

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zapp View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Quote zapp Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: DevForce vs other products and your satisfaction
    Posted: 11-Apr-2008 at 7:32am

We are currently in the process of evaluating application frameworks for our development environment. The choices have been narrowed down to StrataFrame, DevForce (by IdeaBlade) and eXpressApp Framework (by DevExpress). There is some give and take between the products, but the underlying concepts are similar.

What I would like to know is if anybody has experience in their search for an application framework, similar to what we are looking at, and why you chose DevForce (or conversely why you didn't choose another product) over any other tool?

This doesn't have to be specific to the products I mentioned. I would also like feedback as to how successful the DevForce has made your development process.

Thank you for any advice you can provide.
Doug.
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WildHog View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Quote WildHog Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Apr-2008 at 11:28am
Under the assumption that you are interested in commercial products and not something like CSLA .NET ( by Rockford Lhotka who happens to be on the IdeaBlade Technical Advisory Board along with Juwal Lowy, Billy Hollis, Les Pinter and Doron Grinstein).  As a disclaimer, I am a manager type guy not a programmer nor architect, so anything I say should be taken with in that context.
 
In summary I do not think the is anything on the market that reasonable competes with IdeaBlade from my review.   
 
DexExpress XAF does not do multi-tier well at all....but they do have some niceties and a good UI/usability that Ideablade should look at. I am unceratin if their framework easily supports updating dependant controls if the datasource changes or cross module updates.  They do not have plans for Enitity Framework and therefore will not extend a framework which is certain to be a mainstay of .NET software developement for a long time.  I think they made the bet last year or so to develop their own framework as EF delayed release and perhaps in their mind may never be released.  I think they lost the bet and IdeaBlade did not. They also are probabaly extending beyond their core buisness and should probable liase with IdeaBlade.  They are a UI company and IdeaBlade is an infrastructure/app creation company.    
 
Strataframe also does not have an EF plan and I do not think the come close in the breadth and depth of Ideablade's offering.
 
Deklarit supports Enterprise libray but I do not get the impression they have considered the details of cross cutting concerns as has IdeaBlade.
 
I do not know about other products otherthan consideration of P&P Enterprise Library and associated factories.  Although EL is not strictly commercial it is a "standard".  EL is probable IdeaBlade's biggest competitor.  Avande .NET framework was the intially sorce of EL but it is only available if you consult their team of $350/hr consultants.   As for EL and factories they are reportedly not as easy to use.  Reading Ideablade's WhitePapers will give you a flavor how IdeaBlade has extended, ?not actually used EL, EL concepts especially for cross cutting concerns as well as the addition of the Buisness Object Server (BOS). 
 
Given that Ideablade is the Mercedes in their space, questions of the future remains.  I think Ideablade will adapt and extend any Microsoft offering or be bought by them.  As for Deforce EF, I haven't fooled  with it directly, but from review of documentation it needs some UI framework to increase productivity of UI developement/Architecture. In addition there is a problem with using multiple tables, like linking tables, apparently which EF supports. IMO Winforms will be around for sometime until WPF development and third party controls mature...who knows when.  SilverLight may take over the world but it has the same dependancy that WPF has for adoption.  In addition in locked down enivironments you still need to be an Admin. to download the SilverLight FrameWork and/or a new Browser.  I am somewhat on the fence about SilverLight for LOB apps.  IdeaBlade has an MVC pattern for WinForms and also can integrate with CAB, which has a steep learning curve.  CAB itself is more than UI in that it also seperates concerns of the entire app vertically into Modules/WorkItems.  Although CAB April release supports VS 2008 it doesn't support EL 4.0 and does not support Unity, a dependancy injection container which will be a standard for cross cutting concerns across modules.   Unity will be integral with WPF application block developement.  CAB apparently will require a big re-write to incorporate Unity...which P&P may or may not do.  Perhaps, IdeaBlade will use Unity to be compatible with WPF and their WinForms offering??  Unity to my gathering would also help in adding or mixing modules to all levels of an app. 
 
 


Edited by WildHog - 11-Apr-2008 at 11:51am
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multiSingularity View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Quote multiSingularity Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02-Jul-2008 at 8:04pm
Originally posted by zapp


We are currently in the process of evaluating application frameworks for our development environment. The choices have been narrowed down to StrataFrame, DevForce (by IdeaBlade) and eXpressApp Framework (by DevExpress). There is some give and take between the products, but the underlying concepts are similar.


Hi Doug

Looks like we are embarking on much the same exercise as you, only our shortlist came down to Mere Mortals framework (from Oak Leaf), DevForce and eXpressApp.  I had not encountered StrataFrame - thanks for the tip, I'll take a look at that too.

I'm interested to know how your selection process is progressing - have you made a choice yet, and if so what and why?

I think eXpressApp is probably not the right choice for us - it appears to be too constraining on how apps are built - "do it our way or don't do it" seems to be the message I am getting from the tech doco.

Look forward to hearing of your experiences!

Thanks,
Andrew.
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Post Options Post Options   Quote zapp Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Jul-2008 at 6:26am
Hi Andrew,

We actually had 4 options, as I didn't mention the CSLA framework.  We ruled that out early due to its large learning curve and lack of some essential tools we wanted up front.  Like you, we thought eXpressApp was too constraining. 

That left it up to DevForce and StrataFrame.  Now, to put this in perspective, we are a small IT group which has done little to no real application development (I have, but I've been brought in by this company to jump start all new development).  So there is no infrastructure to work with at all.  And since we are so small, we don't have the time to develop a lot of the infrastructure.  So not only were we looking for a tool that provided us with the framework capabilities, but also something that helped us along many fronts, such as form structure and other objects.  Strataframe did it for us since everything was there.  In addition to this, Strataframe seemed to be a more mature product, provided role-based security (another thing we don't have to code), and if we want it, database deployment.  A huge factor here also was ease of use (an oxymoron for a C# developer I suppose).  We wanted a product that we could understand and hit the ground (so to speak) running.  Strataframe gives us a solid framework, which is easy to use, and let's us focus our development on business structure and functionality.

Another huge factor was the support.  I've contacted all 3 companies in various forms, and Strataframe was the most "pleasant" to be involved with.  If you go through their forum, you will notice not only how well organized the different forum groups are, but how much information is available to you.  I posted similar threads on all 3 forums asking for advice, and other than the one posted on this thread, I received the best feedback from the Strataframe users (who seem to actually care more for the product they are working with).

I hope this helps.  We have not yet begun development, but are happy with the choice we've made.

Doug.
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Post Options Post Options   Quote multiSingularity Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Jul-2008 at 5:31pm
Man, sounds like your company = us and you = me!  We too are a small team (20 IT, 9 developers, 2.5 .Net devs), although the team has done some significant development over the years, largely in Delphi.  The last couple of years has seen some .Net dev, but much of it was outsourced and, well, let's just say the quality of that work left a fair bit to be desired.  We are left saddled with a proprietary framework designed and built by the outsourcers that sucks like a Hoover - absurdly complex, minimally functional, and fragile as hell... it adds enormous overhead to development and makes life hard.  Gee, I wonder why we want to get rid of it...

We too looked at CSLA and liked the model but also felt that it didn't offer enough in the productivity stakes to be a real starter so it didn't make the shortlist.  I spent much of yesterday poring over the StrataFrame doco and I have to say I'm pretty impressed.  I also had a phone call from someone from DevForce yesterday following up my emailed queries - a nice touch.  Taking the big picture DevForce and StrataFrame seem to fill very similar niches (obviously with product differences) ; looks to me like the StrataFrame Enterprise Server and the DevForce Business Object Server fill pretty much the same role in the middle tier.  I'm not sure that StrataFrame will help us build web services (beyond providing bus objs) which is a pretty strong requirement for us.  DevForce's lack of support for WebForms is my biggest concern with it, although if I had to give up RAD for web services or web forms I'd give up web forms... having said that I'm not altogether sure that DevForce really gives RAD for web services either - need to drill down some more on that yet.

Anyway... thanks heaps for your reply.  It's a shame you've not yet tackled serious dev with your shiny new framework, I'd love to hear how it pans out.  If you are willing I'd be grateful if you'd drop me a line now and then when you are underway to share your experiences.

Cheers,
Andrew.
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jeffdoolittle View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Quote jeffdoolittle Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Jul-2008 at 11:48pm
Regarding WebForms, in my experience it doesn't matter what ORM you try to use, WebForms tend to be unwieldy and inflexible for anything but the smallest applications.  I've spent most of my development career programming WinForms apps, but here's the dev. stack I'm using for web development these days:

SQL Server
DevForce
ASP.NET MVC
jQuery

DevForce is way more than just an ORM tool.  The model that is generated has enabled my team to develop our applications using nothing but code (no more designers).  My assessment of the primary strengths of DevForce:

1) Performance and ease of performance tuning.  While you can construct an inefficient query, DevForce makes it easy to find the problem and fix it.  Of course, you could make your own inefficient queries using raw ADO.NET, so the ability to do so with DevForce isn't really a strike against it.

2) Easy to use but powerful ORM mapping tool

3) Verification engine.  The Verification engine from IdeaBlade is incredibly powerful and flexible and has enabled us to easily enforce all of our business rules in our Domain Model.  We've been able to avoid leaking business logic into our controllers and views in large part because of the power of DevForce verification.

4) Extension of the System.ComponentModel.PropertyDescriptor class.  DevForce generates a static class for all of your entities containing a static collection of strongly typed PropertyDescriptors.  You can use these to bind up your screens (WinForms, WebForms, or ASP.NET MVC) using powerful DataConverters and ViewDescriptors for determining parse/format rules as well as editiability (read/only, disabled, required, optional) and datatype.  Breaking free from designers has actually made our applications simpler to maintain and debug.  Of course, DevForce has great designer support for WinForms if that's your thing. 

There are many other reasons to choose DevForce, but these are a few that hopefully give you some guidance.  In my estimation, with CSLA you'll spend too much time writing your own DAL code.  With nHibernate, you'll have a configuration nightmare and a lot of confusion for developers who aren't ready to jump to a persistence-non-aware environment.  I don't have a lot of experience with Strataframe, Deklarit or LLBLGen, but when I've shown developers who use these tools what we're doing with DevForce and the other tools I listed above, they typically are blown away.

--Jeff
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