MSDN Software Factories
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Anyone ever used them? I used the smartclient factory and I must say it helped a great deal in building a solid application. That said I have to add that architecture used isn't always the way to go, but if you like working in a modular fasion and want something solid it's definitly worth a try.
WM. What about weapons of mass-construction? "You can always try to smash it with a wrench to fix that. It might actually work" - WillemM
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Anyone ever used them? I used the smartclient factory and I must say it helped a great deal in building a solid application. That said I have to add that architecture used isn't always the way to go, but if you like working in a modular fasion and want something solid it's definitly worth a try.
WM. What about weapons of mass-construction? "You can always try to smash it with a wrench to fix that. It might actually work" - WillemM
WillemM wrote:
Anyone ever used them? I used the smartclient factory and I must say it helped a great deal in building a solid application. That said I have to add that architecture used isn't always the way to go, but if you like working in a modular fasion and want something solid it's definitly worth a try.
Yes. I use the smart-client factory for most of my WinForms apps now. I'm just starting to get round to using the new WebClient and web-service factories now. The Smart client factory is great, makes it easier to get the framework of a CAB app up and running. The patterns used fit my way of thinking. I'm still struggling a little with fitting the web-service factory into my own development model. The business object / data recipes just don't fit with my own methodologies. I need to decide whether mine or Microsoft's way offers the best way forward. To me, software factories are the future of development, at least for the kind of business process automation applications that I build. I just wish that Microsoft would invest more resource in getting the tools out the door, as I have to spend so much time building my own when they should really be in the base toolset of Visual Studio. Things like the new .NET 3 technologies such as Workflow and WPF should have already been integrated into the Smart-Client factory.
Michael CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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WillemM wrote:
Anyone ever used them? I used the smartclient factory and I must say it helped a great deal in building a solid application. That said I have to add that architecture used isn't always the way to go, but if you like working in a modular fasion and want something solid it's definitly worth a try.
Yes. I use the smart-client factory for most of my WinForms apps now. I'm just starting to get round to using the new WebClient and web-service factories now. The Smart client factory is great, makes it easier to get the framework of a CAB app up and running. The patterns used fit my way of thinking. I'm still struggling a little with fitting the web-service factory into my own development model. The business object / data recipes just don't fit with my own methodologies. I need to decide whether mine or Microsoft's way offers the best way forward. To me, software factories are the future of development, at least for the kind of business process automation applications that I build. I just wish that Microsoft would invest more resource in getting the tools out the door, as I have to spend so much time building my own when they should really be in the base toolset of Visual Studio. Things like the new .NET 3 technologies such as Workflow and WPF should have already been integrated into the Smart-Client factory.
Michael CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
Just noticed that Windows workflow foundation is integrated in the webclient software factory, let's hope they add it to the smartclient factory soon.
WM. What about weapons of mass-construction? "You can always try to smash it with a wrench to fix that. It might actually work" - WillemM
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Anyone ever used them? I used the smartclient factory and I must say it helped a great deal in building a solid application. That said I have to add that architecture used isn't always the way to go, but if you like working in a modular fasion and want something solid it's definitly worth a try.
WM. What about weapons of mass-construction? "You can always try to smash it with a wrench to fix that. It might actually work" - WillemM
A recent InfoWorld article publicized the blog post of S. Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Developer Division, celebrating the fact that its Software Factories product had more than 100,000 downloads in six months. The InfoWorld article was rather negative on the technology as an analyst defined the Software Factory technology as “unimportant”. Initiatives like the software factories or the software product lines are often badly considered in the software development world. First, they are not really understood. In the InfoWorld article, the analyst is quoted comparing software factories and object-oriented programming. The industrial background of these approaches could seem also more difficult to transpose in the world of consumer or business applications development where software is not closely connected to devices. I think however that they provide a very interesting vision for projects that are interested in developing software for a multi-customers target or with a strong focus on product evolution.