Developing a new application with .NET?

Question

I have to develop a basic "line of business" application with the usual functionality like orders, stock control, sales, reports, etc.

I will use WPF to develop this application to run on Windows but I want to develop it "open" so I can do a Windows Forms application using the same structure (maybe to run over Mono) or even a Silverlight module. Can someone that did something like that (and survived) give me a sugestion on a guideline or something like that where I can find good practices? I'm a Delphi developer with some intermediate knowledge on C# but there are so many "amazing" libraries, frameworks and patterns that I'm a little lost on what would be good for that project.

Something like: Use EF (maybe wait for ef4?) or nHibernate, or ADO.NET, and expose your data using WCF, or webservices, or forget Mono because of the flexibility loss, etc. Can someone give me a tip on how you would do it? If someone has a bad experience in this type of project, it would be nice to hear from you as well. There is a lot of learning in the wrong decisions too :)

Answer 1

Mono doesn't implement WPF, it's not even on the roadmap. I'm not sure about Entity Framework...

You could probably do it in Silverlight (which has an open source implementation), but it's not ideal for creating desktop (although it is possible since Silverlight 3)

Answer 2

Where do I start?

First, from your description, you're in over your head.
Second, you're trying to pick a technology stack when everything is new to you.

In the best situation, I'd recommend a good training class in a few of the technologies you mentioned so you get a better understanding of them. I'd also recommend a mentor, someone who's done this before.

Reality though, may not allow for training or a mentor. In that case I'd recommend writing several real-life throw away programs. Take one piece of business functionality and try to write it in a few of the technologies you mentioned. If one feels better, and gives you what you want DECISION MADE! Don't stop with the first one that seems to work, try some more.

You should also listen to some good podcasts. I recommend Dot Net Rocks for a good grasp of the technology. The earlier podcasts for this site were also a very good source for some design discussions StackOverflow podcast

Best of luck.

Answer 3

I had to do something very similar recently in WPF. I have an ASP.NET background, but I have never worked with WPF (or WinForms for that matter), and it had me stumped for a while, but the longer I have been working on it (about 3 weeks now), the easier it has gotten. I really just searched Stack Overflow and Google for code snippets similar to what I was doing, and worked through them and changed them as needed. My company bought a book that helped me out as well (It was WPF Unleashed published by Sams), and it was pretty good. I do wish you luck on your first WPF app.

Answer 4

Thank you all for your suport... Brad, I'm already following your advices, doing some test cases to see what looks good... my problem is that altough I can develop an application in WPF and have a intermediate understanding in using the wpf databindings, generics, linq, anonymous objects, all the cool stuff, I always hear about this and that as the solution for all the worlds problems (like mvvm, or parallel programming, or functional languages, etc) and makes me feel "wrong" in my decisions and a bad developer if I do not use any of this nice technologies. I know the concepts but do not dominate it, and seems a lot of things to learn, sadly I do not have that much time. Thomas, exactly because mono do not support WPF i want to make the application as isolated as i can, so I can do a simple winform layer to manipulate the data. darthnosaj, thank you, I'm doing that too, searching internet and found much information (and this nice site full of hellpful people :) )

And Danny, thats what i think i need... will take a look on some sample applications using mvvm and see if that works for me. For what i heard is almost a crime not to use in that case in wich I want that kind of isolation.

Again, thanks all :)

Answer 5

I would suggest you keep your application N-Tier. Make all the entities, data adapter, and business logic separated from the actual desktop application. This way you can use WPF on the Windows platform and use Mono/GTK# on the Linux/Mac platforms.

You will only need to write duplicate code to support the actual GUI application functionality, while your code from the separate entity/data access/business logic library (e.g. DLL/class library) can be used in both your WPF and Mono/GTK# projects. Just add the DLL as a reference to the WPF and Mono/GTK# projects.

There is a good video from Channel 9 on building N-Tier applications

There is also MSDN documentation and guidelines on building N-Tier applications