Logging in Silverlight

The prism logging facade interface for silverlight/wpf allows custom loggers into log4net or whatever you use. Silverlight is always a bit harder to implement but with a service interface back to your web server.

An easy way to implement this in your bootstrapper....

// CustomLogger is a custom logger implementation to whatever you would like.


CustomLogger logger= new CustomLogger();

protected override ILoggerFacade LoggerFacade
{

get


{
    return logger;

}



}

ASP.NET 4 Routing

Just read nice article by Peter Vogel on implementing Routing with ASP.NET 4.

http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2010/03/04/routing-in-aspnet4.aspx

It's interesting how ASP.NET MVC Framework method of url routing has influenced the technical implementation of routing in the framework. Very nice. Cleaner and easier to maintain.

I'm a major proponent of the MVC architectural design pattern in general. Before the ASP.NET MVC Framework was available, I was doing a customized implementation based on a componentized modular architectural approach with modules based on business entity and functional areas with views being either aspx pages or user controls assembled dynamically on master pages.

Silverlight Media Framework

This is some of the most advanced streaming techniques and re-branding capabilities for Silverlight developers I have seen. Download it here and read about it here http://smf.codeplex.com/

Silverlight and Expression Blend Interactivity and 3D

The Matrix3D struct in Expression Blend 3 Interactivity lib has some very nice capabilities to go farther with animations and morphing objects rotating in a more 3D context.

LINQ to SQL and enabling for WCF use

I have noticed that a lot of people think that they have to create separate data contract classes that are marked with the Data Contract and Data Member attributes. If you want to use the OR Designer generated LINQ to SQL classes as data contracts, you can just modify the Serialization Mode to Unidirectional which adds the attributes to your classes automatically.

I'm a firm believer in having Data Contracts that are as slim as possible to have the best performance over the wire. So if you have a WCF Service that will return just one data aspect of a full customer record from a complex database record, then only having that subset in a separate data contract will be better performing than just letting the entire customer record be serialized and transported over the wire.

T4MVC for ASP.NET MVC2

This T4 tool really provides a lot of very nice strongly typed capabilities in MVC related code. Check it out at http://aspnet.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=T4MVC

WPF and Silverlight and multi-targeting

There seems to be much more groundswell and interest in WPF and Silverlight in general which is a good thing. Something that I have been hearing and seeing is a lot of company chief technologists are thinking that in order to do Silverlight applications, it is something vastly different from WPF desktop or rich client apps.

The WPF in Silverlight is a subset of the full .NET 3.5 Framework WPF library. The design patterns and architectural patterns are either identical or very slightly varied.

Yes, because Silverlight is run in a browser plugin there are security constraints and there are some complications of getting and putting data in a line of business type of application but certainly not insurmountable.

I guess because the XAML language is a new paradigm of how to think about designing an architecture and has a steep learning curve, many companies that want to get up to speed with it are looking for more experienced resources in just Silverlight. The thing is, theres not a lot of full web based line of business apps being done completely in Silverlight.

With the Prism Framework and Composite Application Guidance Library, its possible to have a common code base for targeting both WPF desktop and Silverlight web. The underlying main core business logic layer is common to both and is architected in such a way that the main view XAML is designed with Silverlight in mind and keeping track of the limits of the WPF subset in Silverlight.

Contact me at info@kistner.net to get more info on how we can contract with your organization to provide some WPF/Silverlight/Prism consulting services to get you up to speed.

Sharepoint WSS Web Apps

Involved in a situation where there has been some efforts to build a complex line of business application on the Sharepoint platform.

I love Sharepoint and its capabilities for portals or lightweight apps that can take advantage of many of the collaborative capabilities, but there is a point of diminishing return if youre going to have to build an infrastructure of logic and functionality for the type of business workflows that exist in most mission critical applications.

Can all of that be fit into web parts? Can web parts be made to exist as views in an MVC architectural pattern. Well, maybe but its not purposeful as its not intended to be able to do that really. You can do it but should you want to?

Getting started...

wanted to get this started today and will customize later. im going to see if i can mention items from some of the more advanced software development technology and approaches.