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Currently I am figuring out whether the MVC pattern (or a variation) will be suitable for an upcoming project. Therefore I am going to use this article as a reference for various valuable resources I found on the topic.

Basic resources

The following resources explain what MVC et al. are:

• “Model-view-controller” (MVC) on Wikipedia.
• “Model-view-presenter” (MVP) on Wikipedia.

More resources

The following resources explain MVC et al in detail:

• “Understanding Model-View-Controller” – Weblog posting as of may 2008 on Coding Horror.
• “Implementing MVC with Windows Forms” – Question with good replies on Stack Overflow.
• “How would you implement MVC in a WindowsForms application?” – Another question with good replies on Stack Overflow.
• “Selecting a MVC/MVP Implementation for a Winforms Project” – Weblog posting about MVC.
• “Everything You Wanted To Know About MVC and MVP But Were Afraid To Ask” – Another weblog posting about MVC.
• “MVC vs. MVP: A Hillbilly’s Journey” – A comparison of MVC and MVP.

Practical usage resources

The following resources explain how to implement MVC et al. in certain technologies:

• “MVC#” – A Model-View-Presenter framework for the .NET platform.
• “Model-View-Controller for a Windows.Forms Application” – Example application for using MVC with Windows Forms. Simple yet very descriptive MDI application.
• “ASP.NET MVC” – Offical (free) Microsoft MVC framework for ASP.NET.

I will add resources in the future.

If you have good links/recommendations I would love to get them; just post in the comments below. Thank you!

If you  experience DevExpress error messages like the following ones:

ASPxClientTextBox is undefined
ASPxClientTextBox ist undefiniert
__aspxCultureInfo is undefined
__aspxCultureInfo ist undefiniert

You likely forgot to correctly configure your Web.config file on your web server (IIS, IIS 6 or IIS 7).

The knowledge base article “How to manually register a HttpHandler Module” on the DevExpress website tells you how to resolve this issue.

(Keyword: IIS, IIS6, IIS 6, IIS7, IIS 7)

Heute habe ich mir die 550+ Seiten des Buchs “Application Architecture Guide 2.0” ausgedruckt und bin gerade gespannt am Lesen.

In dem Buch, dass Ihr sowohl direkt online lesen könnt, als auch als PDF-Dokument downloaden (beides kostenlos) schreiben Autoren von Microsoft sehr ausführlich über das Design und die Architektur von Anwendungen.

Bisher gefällt mir sehr gut was ich lese (bin auf Seite 156, überfliege vieles nur) sehr gut.

Im Gegensatz zu früheren, ähnlichen Werken von Microsoft gefällt mir an diesem Buch, dass es deutlich “entspannter” geschrieben ist: Vieles wird als Empfehlung geschrieben und mit dem Hinweis: “Du könntest das so machen, manchmal macht es aber so eher Sinn, es so oder so zu machen oder auch ganz bleiben zu lassen”. Desweiteren wird auch öfter mal auf Nicht-Microsoft-Technologien und -Entwurfsmuster verwiesen.

Das alles war in früheren Büchern deutlich Microsoft-lastiger und deswegen für mich unglaubwürdiger.

Das Buch lese ich, weil ich sehe, dass ich mich weiterentwickeln muss und möchte, genauso wie meine/unsere Anwendungen sich weiterentwickeln müssen; hierbei erhoffe ich mir von dem Wissen über mögliche Architekturen viele wertvolle Hinweise. Und sei es nur zu wissen, was ich nicht einsetzen möchte.

Ich bin auf den Rest des Buchs gespannt und meine ersten Gehversuche damit; vieles kenne ich bestimmt schon, habe es bisher bewusst/unbewusst aber nie eingesetzt; anderes ist mir relativ unbekannt und hochspannend!

Praxisbeispiele

Da die Beispiele aus der Praxis dünn gesiedelt sind, will ich nachfolgend die guten die ich gefunden habe auflisten:

• “AdventureWorks Cinema 1.0” – Leider ist der Download zurzeit kaputt, hier ein Interims-Download.
• “Layered Architecture Sample for .NET” – Beispiel auf CodePlex.
• “.NET StockTrader Sample Application” – Beispiel von MSDN.

(Empfohlen hat mir das Buch mein Kollege Dennis)

For years and years I’m trying to convince myself to like and love “Data binding“.

The term “Data binding” (or “UI data binding“) in software development refers to a technique that binds two data/information sources together and maintains them in sync, usually UI controls and underlying (database) objects.

While the theory outlines many benefits like automatic storing/loading of form content and automatic data validation, my own experiences (primarily with Windows Forms in .NET) always lead me to complicated, unreadable code that took much longer and was much harder to debug than manual setting/reading of control values.

I even developed an clean and simple test application where I tried to use databinding in an insolated environment. I was not convinced either.

For a new project I am planning to try again to go with data binding.

After doing some Google search, I decided to sum up negative/critical articles about data binding in this article, since there are many positive postings about data binding (which seem to be mostly done by marketing guys of software companies).

So here are some postings:

“Databinding is EVIL“

Blog posting dated 2006 by a professional software developer who worked several times with data binding in the past and now decided to not use it anymore.

Quotes:

“Ok, I am officially done with databinding….”

“…Databinding works fine if you have very simple UI that does nothing but display data in a primitive way. Soon as you introduce complex and rich UI, databinding makes things much harder. If databinding is so easy to use, why is Brian Noyes’ book “Data Binding with Windows Forms 2.0″ 696 pages?…”

“…Maybe I am old fashioned, but manually populating the controls will be much easier and more understandable. On top of that, the code will be more testable. Less magic is a good thing…”

This guy really speaks out what I feel

“Is data binding a bad idea?“

Posting on Stack Overflow about the pros and cons of data binding.

Quotes:

“…Also I would like to point out the databinding shouldn’t be taken as an all or nothing approch. Many times I use databinding when i have a simple and easy UI requirment to map to my object model. However, when there is special functionality needed I might put some code in the presenter to build up the view as I need it rather than using databinding…”

“Benefits of DataBinding over Manually Querying / Adding to Control“

Another discussion about data binding on Stack Overflow.

Quotes:

“…It can be useful to manually bind if you’ve got a complex input scenario. With databound input controls you can find that you only know you’ve got bad data when it hits the DB and throws an exception (badly formatted date/time, integer out of correct range etc). You can obviously handle this with the various validation / pre-commit events on the data controls but it can be easier (and more obviously readable) to just manually validate your input and post it when you know it’s correct…”

“UI Databinding: alternatives and future“

Yet another discussion on Stack Overflow.

Quotes:

“…The WPF binding although good is too complex, it combines features of XPath with normal .Net binding and is super flexible, but very difficult to debug when it gets complex, and also very longwinded – how many IValueConverter’s does one piece of code need?…”

Other resources

• “Why Data Binding and the like are evil” – Old VB6 article about data binding.
• “Why Databinding Sucks” – Blog posting about data binding.

Of cource you’ll find many more resources on Google by querying for the appropriate keywords.

As a summary for my blog posting, I would love to get tons of comments about why I am right or, of course, why I am wrong.

Thanks!

(Keywords: databinding, data binding, binding, evil, bad, sucks, datenbinding, daten-bindung, daten bindung, schlecht, böse, aufwendig, aufwändig, umständlich)

Glückwunsch an die Jungs von TeamViewer. Seit gestern gibt es TeamViewer fürs iPhone:

Wie immer mit wunderschön gestalteter Oberfläche vom Michael Renner:

Hab’s mir selber gleich mal heruntergeladen, aber noch nicht getestet. Das kommt noch

This article introduces a very small Visual Studio .NET 2008, .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Solution that reflects my experiences after some days of diving into Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).

Since we see the need to make some of our applications (including this one and that one) more “distributed environment aware”, I wanted to do some research in the basic WCF areas.

My goal was to design a system where I’m still able to compile a WCF aware application into a stand-alone version that completely operates without any server. I developed some small tests applications which you can download as source files and binaries.

Test applications

The following test client applications exist:

• A Windows Forms client application.
• A Web Forms client application.

The available server test applications are:

• A Web application that hosts the WCF service.
• A Console application that hosts the WCF service.

The WCF service itself is modelled inside a single .NET DLL (assembly).

Hosting

Since I wanted to test multiple scenarios, I managed to implement the following:

1. Calling a service that is running inside a Web application from a Windows Forms client.
2. Calling a service that is running inside a Console application from a Windows Forms client.
3. Self-calling a service that is running inside a Windows Forms application from within the same Windows Forms application.
4. Self-calling service methods that are compiled into a Windows Forms application from within the same Windows Forms application.

The last two parts differ in a way that option 3 actually uses WCF to communicate with itself, whereas option 4 really just references the assembly (DLL) that contains the services and creates an instance of the service class with the new operator.

So I will try to use option 4 for compiling stand-alone versions of applications that need no WCF functions but still can be built from the same code base.

Download

The following download examples are available:

• Download compiled binaries.
• Download source files (VS.NET 2008 Solution).

Summary

Although I am just starting to touch the basics of WCF, I like what I have seen so far. Much better than the .NET Remoting stuff I tried several years ago.

The biggest amount of work probably will go into (re-)designing the application architecture to fit the WCF needs of a distributed system.

Looking forward for your comments!

So, liebe Freunde, jetzt müsst Ihr ganz tapfer sein, es ist nämlich so:

Arbeit dehnt sich in genau dem Maß aus, wie Zeit für ihre Erledigung zur Verfügung steht – und nicht in dem Maß, wie komplex sie tatsächlich ist.

Das hat der Herr Parkinson 1930 herausgefunden.

Ich bin mir unsicher, ob er das zu 100% so meint oder ob er ggf. überzeichnet um auf das generelle Verhaltensmuster aufmerksam zu machen.

Auf jeden Fall will ich versuchen das mal an mir zu beobachten und zu verbessern.