Thanks for the answers :)
I have already bought the book, just waiting for it to arrive.
Where do I get that sample app from? In the book?
What do you use for your DAL?
I started working through the design patterns from www.dofactory.com. Will CLSA replace the BLL? Or will it just enhance it?
How is it going with your learning curve? You making alot of success? How long have you been learning CLSA?
Thanks
I have been using CSLA since the 1.1 days and am an ardent supporter. I have used it in several enterprise level applications to great success. The learning curve is steep at first, and never ends since Rocky (and the community) are continually pushing it to new heights. The main concept to wrap your mind around is that CSLA is used to build business objects that are based on behavior, not the underlying data model. As for DAL's, you get to choose what you want. CSLA is not dependant on any one. I have used both straight sproc calls internal to the BO's, and I have also encapsulated all DB calls to a DAL class where part is generated via code generation, and part is custom.
Good Luck!
Where do I get that sample app from? In the book?
You can download the framework and the samples here: http://www.lhotka.net/cslanet/download.aspx
What do you use for your DAL?
At the moment I'm using Linq to SQL as it's what the ProjectTracker example app uses. I like the way this strongly types all of your sproc parameters, so will probably use it in the production code.
However, it is worth noting that MS have said they aren't going to develop Linq to SQL further, so it is probably worth looking at the Entity Framework... however the EF is still a pretty immature technology.
There is also absolutely nothing to stop you using ADO.NET (and indeed if you download say version 2.0 of CSLA you will find that uses ADO.NET for the DAL), or indeed just about any other DAL technology you can think of!
I started working through the design patterns from www.dofactory.com. Will CLSA replace the BLL? Or will it just enhance it?
The book will explain the patterns Rocky favours, there is an excellent chapter on this. CSLA definitely wants you to work a certain way, so if you have very fixed ideas on the 'right' design patterns for the app you are writing then it is worth making sure they match up with the Behaviour orientated approach favoured by CSLA.
How is it going with your learning curve? You making alot of success? How long have you been learning CLSA?
I wrote a post on this recently called 'Learning CSLA', so that may be worth a read. But in short; the learning curve is steep and whilst I'm getting the hang of it now, it has taken weeks of reading and coding to get even the basics going.
Probably a big part of this for me is that the framework uses so many aspects of .NET and several of these are areas I haven't used extensively before, so I'm learning .NET theory as well as CSLA theory in places.
Where I'm really suffering is with the lack of sample code. The ProjectTracker sample app is not designed to demonstate best practice, it is designed to show as many features of CSLA as possible. Because of this it is quite difficult to follow in places and it can take a while to get your head round what the code is doing.
What I've done is to come up with a simple four object model of my own and I've been slowly working what I learn from each chapter of the book into this little app.
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