Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

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Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

posted @ Tuesday, March 10, 2009 5:06 PM | 25 Comments

Okay, about a month ago I was shown this demonstration by my new favorite friend Ward Bell of IdeaBlade. Why is he my new favorite friend? Well besides being a great guy, wait till you see what he has to show you. I briefly alluded to my excitement via Twitter as a teaser.

I previously mentioned that we saw some sneak peeks of Silverlight 3 added features for line-of-business application development with Brad Abrams. Today, check out what Ward has to show you:

I am really, really excited about this platform that Ward showed me and I think that you will be as well. Watch the video and show how easy it is to use their framework to enable rapid business application development with data. Visit their DevForce for Silverlight page for information and to sign up for the March 2009 Release Candidate. It’s chalk full of great features including client-side data caching binding to anonymous types and easy validation customization.

Ward will be at MIX09 and you must grab him for some personal demonstration. Hopefully we can convince him to grab some common area and chat with a group of people. He’ll gladly answer all your questions and even accept your jabs if you have them. He’s just returned from the Alt.NET conference in Seattle as well and hopefully can share some thoughts around that with regard to Silverlight and this framework.

Honestly, check this out. What do you think? Sign up for the RC.

tags: silverlight, xaml, data, ideablade, devforce, lob, line-of-business

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution By license.

Comments

Dmitry

3/10/2009 5:37 PM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

Awesome video, 2009 is going to be so exciting for Silverlight!
Bart Czernicki

3/10/2009 6:44 PM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

Won't this compete with the Silverlight 3 LOB framework?
Lixin

3/10/2009 7:28 PM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

@Bart, I think, besides the Silverlight 3 in-built framework, the IdeaBlade framework will also become another good RAD option for some companies or developers.

It is very encouraging that so many companies and developers have been pushing such a lot of great stuff for developing Silverlight business applications into the market.
timheuer

3/10/2009 7:55 PM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

Bart -- what Silverlight 3 LOB framework ;-) ;-). Competition is good in my opinion, it breeds aggressive innovation. As a developer, I like options. I know some don't, but I think providing options is always a good thing. There will be things people don't like about IdeaBlade's implementation and thus they will find options elsewhere like Microsoft's, Caliburn or others.
Mark

3/10/2009 8:14 PM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

(in your best Homer voice)... "Bart!!!"

Yes, I imagine the diversity will only strengthen the position "SL is open for business". And in the end good for us all.

Still not sure where EF fits into all this. I know where Ward stands, but...
Phill

3/10/2009 9:29 PM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

Meh...I'm not sure this is a good idea. Would you not need to give the SL Client access to all your tables directly. Yeah maybe it's easier to do a demo w/ but it seems like poor design to me.

Or am I missing something?
Sean

3/11/2009 6:52 AM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

This approach misses the entire point of the MVC pattern, which is to 'break' the strong commitment to a data model. This is essentially client-server development over multiple tiers...
Bart Czernicki

3/11/2009 7:23 AM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

@Lixin,

Competition is always good and MS will no doubt learn/leverage some things it learns as others do it better. (i.e. LINQ to SQL -> Entity Framework). Back in the ASP.NET/Winforms days when you had to know GDI+ to write nice looking controls UI frameworks helped out a lot. Today that has gone away largely.

I think with all the new design concepts of: TDD, DDD, MVVM patterns, WCF/Data Services; 3rd party LOB frameworks have to walk a very fine line between making your life easier to forcing you down a certain design path. If its true like Sean (post above) mentioned that it breaks decoupling patterns, then its just going to be a "drag and drop" framework for developers that have a poor understanding of Silverlight/architecture.

I would love to see someone build something on top of the Prism v2 framework and make MVVM/Commanding easier to implement in Silverlight. That is something that would be worth its weight in Gold if it existed as complex applications could be a lot easier to write.
timheuer

3/11/2009 8:25 AM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

Bart, re: 'make MVVM/Commanding easier to implement in Silverlight' I couldn't agree more! I think Prism is a great step, but the bar to entry is still pretty high for the 'average' developer (and as not to offend anyone, I'll put myself in that bucket. IdeaBlade's implementation results in a ViewModel approach, but perhaps still abstracts the concept from the developer too much maybe. I think in the coming months we'll see how adoptive the MVVM pattern is for the masses.
timheuer

3/11/2009 8:26 AM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

Sean this is more of a ViewModel approach and I don't think claimed to be an MVC model.
Steve Commisso

3/11/2009 9:57 AM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

At one of my previous contracts I worked with IdeaBlade Classic / CAB. Ward worked fairly closely with our team and is a great guy. IdeaBlade Classic was heavily MVC as it utilized Microsoft CAB (and provided a few abstraction layers of its own).

Great product, highly recommended. I haven't checked out the Silverlight version, though.
Sergey Barskiy

3/11/2009 10:53 AM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

Just my 2 cents. I am not very familiar with IdeaBlade, but CSLA has a framework for Sivlerligth development for about 3 months. As matter of fact, I am using right now to develop commerial LOB application using Silverlight.
Here is the link.
http://www.lhotka.net/cslalight/Default.aspx

Sergey.
timheuer

3/11/2009 11:34 AM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

Sergey, does Rocky have any video walk-throughs for CSLA...I didn't see any on http://www.lhotka.net/cslalight/ but would love to see a demonstration. Would you mind asking him if he has any screencast demo of it?
Zinovate

3/12/2009 12:36 PM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

I don't know if Rocky has a video up yet but I hope he does.
A DNRTV with Carl would be top notch.

In the downloads for CSLA for Silverlight, there is a nice demo that shows off the features.

Ironically, there is a CSLA for Silverlight Webcast on the Magenic site presented by Sergey.
CSLA for Silverlight (11/13/08 Webinar)
www.magenic.com/LinkClick.aspx
Zinovate

3/13/2009 3:26 PM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

CSLA for silverlight in a webcast.
www.lhotka.net/.../...NET36WebcastOnBenkotips.aspx
Thomas Richards

4/27/2009 5:55 AM | #

I was just thinking about Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade and you've really helped out. Thanks!
Mark

5/14/2009 2:23 AM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

I like the look of IdeaBlade, but where does this fit in relation to RIA Services. Are these competing?
timheuer

5/14/2009 9:13 AM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

Mark -- it's fair to look at them as competing. DevForce (IdeaBlade) will likely have a release product sooner.
Anis

10/14/2009 4:30 AM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

Thanks for sharing an aw awesome video on Silverlight Business Application Development. Your post will really help me a great deal.
thinning hair

11/10/2009 11:42 PM | # thinning hair

I have my own small company that is listed as a corporation. I'm wondering how I can apply for business development grants for the technology/internet industry. I'm working on some big web ideas but need funding.
Bill

12/1/2009 9:54 PM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

I don't understand, is this for building web sites ?
Alice-logo design

1/9/2010 1:14 AM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

@bill
of course mate as far as i understand plz correct me if i am worng?
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1/12/2010 11:14 AM | # BBC

Interesting post. I normally comment AFTER reading the posts I visit. If I am ona interesting blog, but, do not like the post, or do not find it worthy to comment on, I refrain from doing so. Thanks for sharing.
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1/26/2010 3:29 PM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

IdeaBlade is a great application, after watching this video I am also excited to use it, its truly very helpful faster application development. I think your best friend has provided a best thing to you :) Thanks for sharing with us.
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2/1/2010 4:15 AM | # re: Silverlight Business Application Development faster with IdeaBlade

nice post...i really enjoyed your article.........