The Environmental Health and Safety office at Yale University where I’ve been working for the last few years helping to port dozens of Access databases into an enterprise level integrated system using CSLA, (as well as adding new ones) is looking to recruit a fulltime senior software engineer to assist with the project, and be part of a small team supporting all their system needs. If interested, you can find position details posted at the following link.
http://www.yale.edu/hronline/careers/application/external/index.html
Basically, they are looking for someone who has general enthusiasm, self initiative, and experience with software patterns and frameworks.
Strong knowledge of CSLA would be good, but is not necessary. At least some knowledge of it with and enthusiasm for learning more would be good. We’re using CSLA 3.0.5 with .Net 4.0 with Win Forms for the main rich client application and ASP Web Forms for additional web UIs for external customers.
Yes, we’re not up to the latest version of CSLA, primarily for two reasons: 1) I didn’t buy the early message being extolled by internal/external Microsoft evangelists that thought WPF and/or Silverlight was the future, because those UIs had too big a learning curve to get mass adoption for RAD enterprise development. And now, with Windows 8 nothing specific appears preferred for enterprise development. 2) CSLA introduced a number of breaking changes in various versions, which makes it non-trivial to port our system with 500 form and 2,500 business classes, so we’re waiting for a good reason to justify the expenditure, and/or a slowdown in general business needs.
However, we do regularly evaluate new versions of CSLA, .NET, etc., looking for anything that is an easy and definite win that we can adopt. Currently, we’re researching APS.NET MVC and latest additions to Web Forms in .NET 4.5 to see which is more appropriate for the substantial work we have coming up in Web.
(...) We’re using CSLA 3.0.5 with .Net 4.0 with Win Forms for the main rich client application and ASP Web Forms for additional web UIs for external customers.
(...) port our system with 500 form (...)
(...) Currently, we’re researching APS.NET MVC and latest additions to Web Forms in .NET 4.5 to see which is more appropriate for the substantial work we have coming up in Web.
Hi Desmond,
You have a huge system based on Windows Forms with some web forms and you are looking for a easy to work with web environment. What if you can unify both worlds?
It looks like you could use Visual WebGUI .
You get a web environment with namespaces and controls that are a replica of Windows Forms as much as possible. Porting Windows Forms to WebGUI is quite easy. Not only you get a low migration cost but you can leverage Windows Forms experience and get productive right away for the new developments that you mention.
By the way, CSLA .NET Contrib includes WebGUI utilitiy classes for CSLA, just like Csla.Windows classes.
Hi Tiago,
I've seen your post about Visual WebGUI over the years, and the general claims that are made for it, which sound amazing, (a verified silver bullet). It definitely originally sounded like something that would be very useful, but I never saw much additional buzz around it, so it does seem that its greatness has been resulted in popularity. Am I complete wrong here? Am I getting a bad read on it?
In the past, I did check the web site reference you gave, but I don't find the Gizmo site the easiest to navigate around and get information. And I tried to download some of the sample projects you gave, but could not open them in either VS 2010 or VS 2012. So I have to ask myself is it worth trying to pursue this effort further?
They also seem to claim Windows Forms to HTML5 also, which may be of more interest in the future if MS is successful at making that the preferred UI for Window(s) Clients.
Before I do any more investigation can you tell me if Gizmo’s product handles a rich client, for instance, we use an MDI Interface, with rich forms containing many tab controls and data grids?
Have you used Visual WebGUI regularly with CSLA, and are you still using it?
Best regards,
Des Nolan
Hi Des,
It seems no one at Gizmox knows the meaning of marketing. So Gizmox web site is awful, Gizmox communication is lousy, getting information is hard, outdated samples should be replaced by updated ones, etc.
Nevertheless you can have a look at their public demos here and here. Concerning the technicalities, since you read my posts over the years, no need to repeat them again, but you can read this to get a more detailed technical overview. If you have questions, I can try and answer them. One interesting detail is that they are starting to port the underlying technology to Java. By underlying technology I mean the server/browser interaction, etc.
Concerning Visual WebGUI projects, they have a different project ID and VS can't handle it unless you install the ProStudio. Install the version "without sources" as the one "with sources" needs a specific steup procedure. If you have problems installing it, I'll be glad to help.
I don't understand the "Windows Forms to HTML5" claim. This is what Visual WebGUI does. You take your Windows Forms code, made some changes and voilá. you have a brand "new" HTML5 application.
Concerning the "rich client", MDI, etc question, have a look at the samples above. Besides their samples, I must say how quickly the browser reacts to events, namely button enable/disable or error icon show: just like a rich client!
CSLA relies on heavy use of DataBinding. Windows Forms DataBinding has some issues and to overcome those issues, Rocky made Csla.Windows. Visual WebGUI needs an equivalent module (CslaContrib.Windows) you can find at CSLA .NET Contrib. But that's old news. The news is that I'm willing to make a "porting demo". Do you have a small CSLA 4 WindowsForms project with business and authorization rules? Send it to me and I'll return the same project in Visual WebGUI form. Hey! I said small, not the 2500 form project. I'm serious about that.
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