P&P Summit Day Four: Smart Client Software Factory

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The next session was given by Wojtek Kozaczynski (pronounced Voytek) and was on the Smart Client Software Factory. Wojtek was the architect of the GAT and GAX, as well as the Smart Client Software Factory. His talk is centered on what the Smart Client Factory is and why it is that way.

What’s in the factory?

  • Narrative guidance
    • Help, etc.
    • Includes what patterns are used, how to build a smart client, etc.
  • Reusable assets
    • CAB
    • EntLib
  • VS automation through he GAT
    • Recipes to create thing dynamically
  • Reference implementation
    • Two reference implementations
    • Hands on labs

The talk was a description of the Smart Client Software Factory and CAB mostly. I’ll not try to describe all of this since it’s already documented completely in the help for the factory. Just go download the factory if you’re interested.

Wojtek went through a step by step demo of how to create a very simple app with the factory. Again, it’s an experience best shown by directly dealing with the factory.

He did mention that you can extend the guidance package to modify the templates that comes with the source code for the package. This allows you to create your own recipes. Imagine creating your own template for a new module that contains all the metadata and objects you require for your specific application. Think of it as Enterprise Templates for projects, except more granular and included in guidance for your developers. Pretty nice. This is referred to as the T4 template engine.

In the future they plan adding more support for DSL tools to help layout and generate some of the modules and such better. Also they want to provide support in the factory for better deployments of the factory so that templates and such can change at a faster rate without having to uninstall/reinstall the factory.