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Introduction

The last few weeks have been very exciting. At PDC 2009 Microsoft announced WCF RIA Services which is now the official name of .NET RIA Services. Their intention is to emphasize how close RIA Services and WCF is. However there were minor changes to the API it didn’t affect my previous article so you can still consider it valid.

In my last article I wrote about the basic concepts of WCF RIA Services and n-tier development. In this one we’ll talk about the features of WCF RIA Services in terms of creating complex queries.

Introduction

In this series of articles we will talk about buildng N-Tier Silverlight business application, why we want to use multiple tiers, what problems we have to face and how .NET RIA Services can help us solve our issues.

Going N-Tier

If you develop complex business applications with a large codebase that can easily adapt to changing environments you introduce multiple tiers or layers. For example, you create a Data Access Layer that communicates with your data source whatever that is and passes the requested data to the layer above in object oriented form.

Thierry Fierens from Adest is the next person who responded to our “Shared Experience” initiative. He explains in details about his experience with Silverlight and shares a little information about his company projects. While new to Silverlight, Thierry has a vast experience in Client/Server application design so be sure that you will be intrigued by his responses.

Don't forget that you may also submit your answers together with a white paper of the Silverlight solution you have. We'll be really glad to publish information about your recent Silverlight projects.

Now let’s finally take a look at what Thierry Fierens has shared with us.

1. Introduction

In the previous parts of the article I showed you the first two groups of patterns used in the Composite Application Library (CAL) – Composite User Interface patterns and Modularity patterns. In the final part I will show you the third group – Testability patterns.

2. Patterns and Practices in the CAL - quick overview

As a whole the patterns used in CAL can be separated in three main groups:

• Composite User Interface patterns (part 1)
  • Composite
  • Composite View
  • Command
  • Adapter
• Modularity patterns (part 2)
  • Separated interface and Plug In
  • Service Locator
  • Dependency Injection
  • Event Aggregator
  • Façade
  • Registry
• Testability patterns (part 3)
  • Inversion of control
  • Separated presentation

3.

1. Introduction

In the previous part of the article I showed the first part of most important patterns and practices used in the Composite Application Library (CAL). In the second part I will show you the second group – the Modularity patterns.

2. Patterns and Practices in the CAL - quick overview

As a whole the patterns used in CAL can be separated in three main groups:

• Composite User Interface patterns (part 1)
  • Composite
  • Composite View
  • Command
  • Adapter
• Modularity patterns (part 2)
  • Separated interface and Plug In
  • Service Locator
  • Dependency Injection
  • Event Aggregator
  • Façade
  • Registry
• Testability patterns (part 3)
  • Inversion of control
  • Separated presentation

3.

Ken Azuma from 2ndFACTORY is the next person who responded to our “Shared Experience” initiative. He explains in details about his experience with Silverlight and shares a little information about the "Jellyfish Deep Zoom” project presented at the MIX09 Conference. Ken is an experienced architect at Japan so be sure that you will be intrigued by his responses.

Don't forget that you may also submit your answers together with a white paper of the Silverlight solution you have. We'll be really glad to publish information about your recent Silverlight projects.

Now let’s finally take a look at what Ken Azuma has shared with us.

Introduction

In Part 7.1 of this series I looked at the importance of styling your Silverlight applications. In this article I will be taking a look at fashions in user interface design of late, and what basic elements can be identified as working towards beautiful and functional applications. Also I will address some of the “controversy” from my previous article and provide some opinions and responses to the comments I received.

Before we start, I have a disclaimer. I’m a developer, not a graphics designer – so I’m writing these styling articles from a developer’s perspective (and with the same limited graphical design skills many other developers share).

1. Introduction

In previous articles I showed how the most famous composite design patterns (Model – View – Controller and Model – View – Presenter) can be used with great success in Silverlight despite of the different programming model in Silverlight. My latest article targets a completely new pattern which has been created especially for WPF, but it is also very suitable for Silverlight applications. Today I’ve decided to continue my series of articles with OOP approach and to present you the main design patterns and practices used in the Composite Application Library (CAL).