Introductory videos that show csla in action?

happle posted on Saturday, May 16, 2009

I've watched two csla/silverlight presentations online, one by Rocky and one by Sergey. They're both good, but I couldn't tell from them if all of the code they showed was created by csla, or whether more than just the obvious customizations were manually entered. A lot of 'products' have a video demonstrating the package in action, starting a project from scratch, so you can see what it does, but I could not find a video like that on this site. I don't want to buy the $200 video series at this point, I simply want to get a basic notion of what csla adds to the picture, and what kind of work one needs to add to what it does. Is there such a introductory video online, here or elsewhere?

mbblum replied on Saturday, May 16, 2009

Another place to look is at dnrTV (http://www.dnrtv.com/) and look for Lohtka in the Previous Shows. Rocky has been on there several times and you will probably find what you are looking for.

He has also been on several DonNetRocks audio podcasts, but you won't see the code there.

RockfordLhotka replied on Sunday, May 17, 2009

I am in the process of creating a series of videos covering CSLA .NET for Silverlight, and you can buy them at a discount now, through a pre-release offer (http://store.lhotka.net). The first four segments are online now, with three more to come (segment 5 should be in about a week).

While much of this content is for Silverlight, segments 1, 5 and 6 apply to CSLA .NET in general.

Once I'm done with this series, it is possible that I'll do another video series covering CSLA .NET basics, and perhaps others focused on various topics.

Mick_G replied on Monday, May 18, 2009

I decided I would throw my 2 cents worth in on this. I have been using a competing framework for a couple of years. I went with the other product which cost me some bucks because they seemed to have a lot more tools to get the new comer off to a good start. The only problem is their support for SilverLight is a little thin. That brought me back to CSLA. I had originally bought Rocky's book but at the time found it a little weighty for my abilities at the time, now much easier read.

Now having said all that, CSLA is just a framework. Code that simplifies the writing of business objects. It doesn't have any code generating capabilities and the book and examples are light in the realm of starting examples, and by that I mean examples that start with a blank canvas. There are however several different ORM tools out there that have templates for CSLA, CodeSmith comes to mind as an example.

I think the biggest advantage to CSLA is the community of people using it. This forum is active, Rocky is working constantly on improving it and teaching everyone he can to use it. That goes a long way with me!

Mick

RockfordLhotka replied on Monday, May 18, 2009

I appreciate your vote of confidence Mick, thank you :)

I don’t know if you’ve looked at the Silverlight video series, but in that case I really do start with a blank canvas and build from scratch. No discussion on framework design, and instead pure focus on how to use the framework, which is the thing a lot of people have requested.

Rocky

Mick_G replied on Monday, May 18, 2009

Why yes I have and I stand corrected. I guess I was thinking back to my first exposure as a relative newbie to the idea of a Business Object Framework and it just all seemed like everyone else new what was going on and I just couldn't seem to find any foothold to get a leg up. But I am feeling much better now!

Mick