Re: Architecture Recommendations
I quite understand your question. It is a valid question. I struggle with
this myself a la Windows forms, here today, gone tomorrow. (Windows Forms is
still supported to be frank but it's not a technology you want to build
anything on because MS is making no more investments in it after a
significant initial investment - see the MS roadmap for confirmation).
To insulate yourself and your investment from Microsoft's blatant penchant
for changing directions, you should design using SOA. One pattern that works
well is to separate the UI from the middle tier and use WCF to go between
them. WCF has achieved critical mass, so it is likely to be here for a
while. With that in the middle, you can build out your GUI using whatever
you feel comfortable with - ASP.NET, WPF etc. Same approach for Middletier
to datasource. If WPF morphs into something else, then you are only stranded
on the UI which you should be able to migrate.
If WCF goes away, you can replace the communication layer with Web services
or whatever the next hottest thing is that always an RPC type call.
--
Regards,
Alvin Bruney
Auther Plug
OWC Blackbook now on download at www.lulu.com/owc
"whammer" <kevinsalt@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ada527e6-02d6-49c3-b336-38ee4f41b132@y33g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
My development team is about to embark on the creation of a new
enterprise system, there are a few nailed down specifications imposed
by people higher up the food chain than me.
1) The database will be SQL2005
2) Most functionality will be made available over an intranet
3) An Interface needs to be exposed for communications with Mobile
Devices
4) Any dotnet code would be preferred to be in VB.Net
5) Visual Studio 2008 Team System should be made use of for project
management, source code repository etc..
I know that there are a number of different ways to approach the
architecture of this project, what I would like is the opinions of
others in terms of what they think would be likely to be a robust
architecture that will stand the test of time. i.e. is it worth
looking at WCF, WPF or are these things seen as gimmicks that will not
be around for long.
Many thanks