10 exciting things to know about XAF

XAF Team Blog
19 May 2008

On June 2nd, TechEd in Orlando gets started. Several of us (let's see - Julian, Mark, Ray, Mehul, Gary, Azret, Jeff, me... I'm probably forgetting somebody) are going to be there at the Developer Express booth, and of course we're hoping to talk to many of you, show you new things we've been working on and get your feedback. It's also exciting times for XAF: it has been selected as Best of Tech·Ed 2008 Developers Awards FINALIST in the Database Development category.

Over the next few days, leading up to TechEd, I'm going to post a series of interesting things in/about XAF. Some of them are more technically challenging than others, but all of them fall into the "I'm sure not everybody's fully aware of this" category. And no, the above announcement about our nomination is not number 1 :-) Here's the list of topics I'm going to cover - come back to this list over the days and I'll link all the posts here as I create them.

  1. Best practices for domain objects
  2. Customizing the default applications
  3. Validation and what (else) you can do with it
  4. General purpose standard modules
  5. Go do it! - Action types and options
  6. XAF extensibility points
  7. Take advantage of the UI abstraction
  8. Add your own UI parts
  9. Styling ASP.NET applications - delayed
  10. Advanced data layer features

So - look out for those articles, and let me know what you think!

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Geoff Davis
Geoff Davis

God darn it, these brilliant events always happen in the US and sometimes I wish I was born American just so that I can go to them. Us lonely single handed contract developers in the UK (and Europe) who always miss out :-(

19 May 2008
Oliver Sturm (DevExpress)
Oliver Sturm (DevExpress)

Hey Geoff - I presume your comments are about TechEd? Well... being in the UK, you're actually in the prime position to see Gary or me at loads of events that we're attending all the time! Next UK events for me are NxtGenUG Fest 08 in Reading and a user group meeting at VBUG Newcastle - looking forward to seeing you there or elsewhere in the future!

19 May 2008
Anonymous
Gary Short (Developer Express)

Geoff,

Oliver is right he and I are always reaching out to the community at events up and down the UK, in fact I'm speaking on the subject of web application frameworks at VBUG Newcastle on Wednesday (May 21) is that anywhere near you? If so, pop along and say hi!

19 May 2008
Neal
Neal

How about posting an ASPxScheduler in read-only mode on your web site that list all of the events DX will be participating in?  Add options to download vCal/iCal so we can put these events on our calendars with ease.

19 May 2008
Robert Fuchs
Robert Fuchs

Oliver,

how about events a liitle bit more in the south (of Europe).

regards, Robert

PS: assuming that you are a native german speaker like me...

19 May 2008
Oliver Sturm (DevExpress)
Oliver Sturm (DevExpress)

Hi Robert,

the past few years I've always been at the Basta! conferences in Germany (next one late September this year), where I'm the conference chair for the C# track at the moment. I've also been to the NRW 06 & 07 community events in NRW (obviously <g>), don't know yet about their event this year. User groups in Germany are a bit too far away for a one-off visit, but perhaps I should think about that... the SDN conference 2008 (near Amsterdam - might be close to you, I don't know) could be another thing this year, but I'm not yet sure about that either. And I believe I'll be at TechEd Europe in November in Barcelona.

Apart from that - always open to suggestions :-) Feel free to send me email if you have something specific in mind that we're currently missing out on!

19 May 2008
Robert Fuchs
Robert Fuchs

Oliver,

Amsterdam is too north, Barcelona too south...

I'm in Austria and don't like to travel - unless for holidays ;-)

regards, Robert

19 May 2008
Oliver Sturm (DevExpress)
Oliver Sturm (DevExpress)

You're being a bit picky, aren't you? :-)

I'm only aware of one Microsoft organized event going on in Austria, and I've never been to that one... but who knows, perhaps one day.

19 May 2008
Geoff Davis
Geoff Davis

Hey Oliver/Gary,

I'm located in Leeds, do you plan on doing any talks there in the future. If so I would love to come along.

Reading/Newcastle are a bit out of the way for me but I suppose with some careful planning I could take the day off and come and see you guys.

Geoff.

19 May 2008
Anonymous
Shankar

Hi Oliver/Gary,

I am a big fan of XAF, What about the security model? Without which the application is incomplete. Does Point 10 Address it (T thought the implication of security on UI  is primary to the application)

Shankar

20 May 2008
Oliver Sturm (DevExpress)
Oliver Sturm (DevExpress)

Geoff - hehe... you know, if you were born American, the chances that you'd have to travel the equivalent of the distance between Leeds and Newcastle would still be pretty big. Well, I'm sure we'll meet eventually. Gary and I will blog about the events we attend and hopefully it'll work out at some point.

Shankar - the security model sure is very important, of course it is! But this series is not mainly about repeating a lot of the content that's already in the docs, or things that are really entirely obvious. I'm trying to find things which fit that "I'm sure not everybody is fully aware of this" category, and security systems as such didn't really seem to fit that box very well. I am planning on including the security systems in (6), because they offer a good number of important extensibility points.

20 May 2008
Anonymous
Gary Short (Developer Express)

NC Software that's a nice idea and it might be possible. In the meantime, I publish my calendar at www.garyshort.org/Calendar.html If you are attending any of the events I'm at, don't forget to come and say hi!

20 May 2008
drew..
drew..

just a thought, but these repeated, cut-off posts by eXpress App Framework Team look a tad unprofessional ☻

27 May 2008
Oliver Sturm (DevExpress)
Oliver Sturm (DevExpress)

Drew - interesting point there. These aren't cut-off posts, they are trackbacks to the announcement post which Community Server shows in this rather weird format indistinguishable from any other comment. They don't really serve any purpose in this post so I'm going to remove them.

27 May 2008
Michael Proctor [DX-Squad]
Michael Proctor [DX-Squad]

I would just like to say that after developing in VB.NET with your controls for the last 2 years I decided to have a look at this XAF thing you guys keep celebrating about.

At first a little overwhelmed but went through the tutorial. It is a bit of a worry because after a bit of trial and error had a system that showed data similiar to a program I have been developing for over 6 months within 2 weeks. That makes me look like a fool for taking so long with the original :)

EXCELLENT WORK, I always wanted to get into XPO but never found a good reason for it. Testing out XAF has showed me the power of XPO and the ease of proper BO designing. Is there any documents on how BO changes such as removal or addition of fields or changes to size or type of properties affect current data in the database?

Also any documents on being able to make a end user database selector such as a form which allows the user to select the database location? and how to modify a persistant property to ensure the connectionstring is always used?

Again thankyou for making XAF and also these posts both from Oliver and Gary are helpful to identify different "features" of XAF which I didn't realise existed :)

28 May 2008
Anonymous
XAF - 1 - Best practices for domain objects - eXpress App Framework Team

Pingback from  XAF - 1 - Best practices for domain objects - eXpress App Framework Team

7 November 2008
Anonymous
Gary's Blog

Cast your mind back to just before TecheEd US and you’ll remember that Oliver wrote a series of posts

2 December 2008
Anonymous
Rapido

How i wish you can come here in the Philippines!

8 April 2010

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