What are the .NET frameworks currently available that help build business applications ?

Question

And what are their pros/cons in terms of maturity, community support, ease of development ?...

In my mind, a business application framework should provide :

• ORM integration (possibly relying on existing solutions like NHibernate, the Entity Framework...).
• a validation library.
• UI integration components (ASP .NET and/or Windows Forms and/or WPF...).

Answer 1

• Speaking about ORM, take a look at BlToolkit. It is easy to work with stored procedures using it.
• As for UI, there is DevExpress libraries, that contains a lot of controls for all three technologies you listed. For ASP.NET look at ASP.NET MVC if you haven't.

Answer 2

DevExpress .NET Business Application Frameworks

• eXpressApp Framework
• eXpress Persistent Objects

Answer 3

CSLA.NET

Answer 4

There are loads of tools. Amoung ORMs I would look at.

• ADO.NET Entity Framework
• BLToolkit
• DataObjects.Net
• NHibernate
• EntitySpaces

I am using DataObjects currently but others are also ok.

For WPF applications, I would recommend Microsoft Composite Application Library with Third party controls. For example,

• Telerik .
• infragistics.
• Devexpress

These three are proved to be ok. For web applications,

• Composite Web Application Block
• LiveUI.NET
• .NET RIA Services
• ASP.NET Dynamic Data
• ASP.NET MVC (if UI is not going to be complex)