Microsoft P&P Software Factories

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I didn’t notice that the Microsoft P&P team has released something they call “Software Factories” which are supposed to guide the developer in building different apps using best practices (at least that is what I think they do from the descriptions).

Specifically I am interested in the Web Client Software Factory:

… provides an integrated set of guidance that assists architects and developers in creating composite Web applications and page flow client applications.

These applications have one or more of the following characteristics:

  • They have complex page flows and workflows.
  • They are developed by multiple collaborating development teams.
  • They are composite applications that present information from multiple sources through an integrated user interface.
  • They support XCopy deployment of independently developed modules.
  • They support online business transaction processing Web sites.

 

and the Web Service Software Factory, which as they put it is:

… an integrated collection of tools, patterns, source code and prescriptive guidance. It is designed to help you quickly and consistently construct Web services that adhere to well known architecture and design patterns.

The package covers:

  • Designing ASMX and WCF messages and service interfaces.
  • Applying exception shielding and exception handling.
  • Designing business entities in the domain model.
  • Translating messages to and from business entities.
  • Designing, building, and invoking the data access layer.
  • Validating the conformance of service implementation, configuration, and security using code analysis.
  • Planning for the migration to WCF.
  • Applying security to WCF services.
  • Applying message validation.

    • Refactor! for ASP.NET

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    This looks really cool. 

    You can download it here for free.

    Included Refactorings

    		Add Validator
    		Create Overload
    		Encapsulate Field
    		Extract ContentPlaceHolder
    		Extract ContentPlaceHolder (create master page)
    		Extract Method
    		Extract Property
    		Extract Style (Class)
    		Extract Style (id)
    		Extract to User Control
    		Flatten Conditional
    		Inline Temp
    		Introduce Constant
    		Introduce Local
    		Introduce Local (replace all)
    		Move Declaration Near Reference
    		Move Initialization to Declaration
    		Move Style Attributes to CSS
    		Move to Code-behind
    		Rename
    		Reorder Parameters
    		Replace Temp with Query
    		Reverse Conditional
    		Safe Rename
    		Simplify Expression
    		Split Initialization from Declaration
    		Split Temporary Variable
    		Surround with Update Panel

     

    UPDATE:  It seems that installing this may have removed some of the features of the old Refactor! that I was frequently using (?).  I used to use the “Surround With–>Region” all the time.  Now that is gone.  I will have to investigate.

    The "Microsoft Crossroads"?

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    Sam Gentile thinks that MS is at a crossroads in terms of web development.

    He thinks with all the cool, free, cutting edgs stuff out there, like Ruby on Rails, MS may soon lose out on all the “alpha geeks”, who move on to newer and better things while MS stays locked in the past.

    I’m not ready to crown RoR the winner of anything yet.  True, MS is usually not on the cutting edge, but they usually do a pretty good job adopting good ideas.  There are only a handful of serious RoR sites out there.  If that number grows a ton, then it will mean something. 

    Martin Fowler has some similar concerns though, so maybe this will come to fruition.

    Unit testing data access

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    Roy Osherove blogs that he was mistaken when he suggesting using mocks for data access code.  With the improved Rollback attributes that he helped create, along with people like Justin Burtch who created a similar attribute for VSTS, they are now thinking that this is the way to go: rolling back database changes.

    Roy is no fan of VSTS testing, finding a few bugs and some questionable design decisions.  Those don’t seem like deal breakers for me, but we will see.

    BindingListView

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    The BindingList is very nice, but doens’t support some things like sort and filter that a lot of people would like to have (see here for a short discussion on BindingList vs Datatable).

    This project, in sourceforge, called BindingListView is supposed to allow you to get a sorted or filtered “view” of a bindinglist.

    Might be worth checking out.