[dba-VB] Proposing/Planning Northwind.NET v.1.5

Salakhetdinov Shamil mcp2004 at mail.ru
Sun Apr 19 13:18:25 CDT 2009


Hi Gustav,

Thank you.

Yes - "a treeview structured menu system to replace the switchboard form."

<<<
If so, I made one recently and it has its challenges, but users are very happy with it.
>>>
Yes, I do remember you have posted on that subject on AccessD or dba-VB - can we use parts of this your application GUI in our open source Northwind.NET project?

<<<
A MDI Parent Form was the container and all app forms were children of this.
>>>
I'd propose to use SDI not MDI and Custom Controls developed/"morphed" from Northwind.NET v.1.0 forms.
SDI will use Splitter control to split SDI form into TreeView section and a Custom Controls' section. For the v.1.5 we can even use List Control instead of TreeView.

For v.2.0 there will be additional Splitter control introduced to further split Custom Controls' section into two subsections: ListView and Custom Conrtols. v.2.0 will also for sure use TreeView as the main navigation method as well as will introduce paged navigation via ListView - the way the forms are getting data now in Northwind.NET v.1.0 is not good/will be slow for large datasets - that has to be changed...

<<<
split "monolith"
>>>
I mean to move/convert:

1) Datasets into Northwind.NET.DataSets;

2) Forms into  Northwind.NET.Forms (or Northwind.NET.Forms.UserControls) having custom controls obstained from current forms;

3) Reports into Northwind.NET.Reports - that would have all .rdlc files as well as custom controls obtained from current reports' forms (but with just one generic custom control for reports without parameters) and dedicated custom controls for reports with parameters. (We can even try to develop generic solution with one custom control for all reports and generating controls to enter parameter values on-the-fly but that would need some advanced programming I wanted to avoid because of tight deadlines/scarse development resources - but if anybody from outside of our team will come with ready to use generic solution we can use it immediately)

The idea to use Custom Controls has an advantage to have them reused in the follow-up WPF sample application(s) "out-of-the-box" because WPF forms can host WinForms custom controls AFAIK although I didn't test that...

Of course when going from "monolith" to modularized architecture there come some side-effects/draw-backs - one of them is described here:

Issue On Decoupling DataSets From WinForms FE Project 
http://northwind.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=53037

This issue (if I'm not missing its effective workaround) is one of the reasons (for me at least) to "suspect" DataSets are not so good for Enterprise Level development (if MS will not fix the above issue real soon) - and that's why our roadmap to come finally to ADO.NET Entity Framework is looking currently as the right way to aim at long run...

Last note for now: splitting "monolith" Northwind.NET.FE project doesn't mean here to break it - I'd propsoe to leave it as it's, and create Northwind.NET.FE.1.5 project for the intermediate release and then Northwind.NET.FE.2.0 for teh release having Treeview + ListView paged + Custom Controls based user interface.

Of course one can propose many more improvements (/new sections) to GUI but to keep developing and releasing new versions steadily we have to keep adding new features/new GUI elements in small chunks...

Thank you.

--
Shamil


-----Original Message-----
From: "Gustav Brock" <Gustav at cactus.dk>
To: <dba-vb at databaseadvisors.com>
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 19:27:35 +0200
Subject: Re: [dba-VB] Proposing/Planning Northwind.NET v.1.5

> Hi Shamil
> 
> Count me in please!
> 
> But I think you need to elaborate a bit on your thoughts about "TreeView based GUI" and "monolith" ...
> 
> I guess you mean a treeview structured menu system to replace the switchboard form. If so, I made one recently and it has its challenges, but users are very happy with it. A MDI Parent Form was the container and all app forms were children of this.
> 
> /gustav
> 
> >>> Salakhetdinov Shamil <mcp2004 at mail.ru> 19-04-2009 19:11:05 >>>
> Hi SCRUM Team and All,
> 
> With Northwind.NET v.1.0 has got released today I wanted to propose to immediately start the next week a follow-up project:
> 
> Northwind.NET v.1.5 Sample Application - that would be an intermediate project/release to develop and release later Northwind.NET v.2.0 Sample application: the idea is to "morph" in two steps the current set of forms and reports (Northwind.NET v.1.0) into TreeView based GUI as well as to modularize the current Northwind.NET.FE "monolith".
> 
> Who is in?
> Please announce here your interest to participate in the follow-up project. Then we can exchange our ideas what we can do.
> Planned deadline for v.1.5 release are two weeks starting Monday, April 20, 2009. 
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> --
> Shamil
> 
> P.S. I still didn't have opportunity to keep tracing our project progress in TargetProcess as I have had to do too much development and I didn't have free time left for TargetProcess data entering/editing...
> 
> 
> 
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