Does anyone have any experience with deployment options for Prism Apps?
I tried ClickOnce and found it to be too buggy and too hard for my users (With Prism 4 and .NET 4).
Clearly I could just go make a normal installer using installshield or something. But what I really want is something that lets me leverage the fact that my app is in modules.
Something that will allow me to re-deploy a single changed module/dll and not have to require re-deploying the whole application.
Is there anything out there (besides ClickOnce) that works that way?
How about this:
http://wyday.com/wyupdate/
Though you might have to use wyBuild to use it.
Related
How can I use it on WinRT (Windows 8) - I can't compile it. Can I use it also with "normal" Windows (WPF)?
There isn't currently an mvvmcross port specifically for wpf - a couple of people have suggested building one, but the majority of users have so far requested more work on mobile platforms instead. There is a current console (win32) port and extending that towards WPF should be quite straight-forward.
Future development is now based around the Portable Library branch - see some info on http://slodge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/mvvmcross-vnext-portable-class.html and the code on https://github.com/slodge/MvvmCross/tree/vnext
For WinRT, the TwitterSearch example within the vNext branch is a good place to start - it should compile and work across all of MonoTouch, MonoDroid, WP7, WinRT and Console:
If you find you can't compile then please log specific compiler error messages either here or to github issues.
MvvmCrossLibs\MvvmCrossLibs.sln consists of many projects, requiring different runtimes to be installed to open properly (Mono Touch, Mono Droid, WP7). If you only need the library in WinRT, your best bet is to open Cirrious\Cirrious.MvvmCross\Cirrious.MvvmCross.WinRT.csproj directly and add the missing Newtonsoft.JSON package with NuGet (you'll need to save the automatically created .sln file before that). It should compile just fine after that, at keast it did for me. Now just reference the assembly in your Windows Store app project and start using it.
I don't have any previous experience with MVVMCross, but it doesn't look like it currently supports despktop WPF apps. I don't know how difficult it would be to create/compile such a version, though.
I'm looking for some kind of ORM that can be used with Metro Style apps. I found lots of posts referring to different SQLite implementations that seem to be working (or not, according to other posts) with Metro style apps, but no working sample projects so far showing an ORM on Windows 8 Metro. Other posts are referring to projects that might work, but not pass the Marketplace certification because of forbidden API calls.
Lots of the information I found is probably outdated, so I'm not sure if i even googled this right.
Has any of you managed to get some kind of ORM up and running in a Windows Metro style app? If possible, I'd like to use EF Code First, but I'm growing desperate, so I'm not too picky.
Thanks for your suggestions,
Adrian
I'm currently using SQLite on a C# Windows 8 Metro App using the code from an experimental branch as explained by Tim Heuer in this post (there's also a video), and it is working great, and it will pass the store certification (Tim Heuer also mentions it in the post).
It is not Entity Framework, but it is the best we have available so far for working with local databases.
Other alternatives:
IndexedDB (It's an HTML5 feature, so it is only for HTML5 apps)
SQLite - AFAIK it works, but doesn't pass the store certification yet
WinRT File Based Database - Interesting, though not as performant as SQLite
Siaqodb - Interesting. Didn't test it yet
Sterling NoSQL OODB - Doesn't support WinRT just yet, but should not be difficult to port... I expect a release soon. It is NoSQL, though.
As Ladislav says, it is currently not possible. You can, however, use WCF Data Services (OData) on the WinRT platform. For more information, see Phani's post on Developing Windows 8 Metro style applications that consume OData.
As far as I know it is not possible because .NET for Metro doesn't even have System.Data namespace and all required classes for accessing databases.
Silverlight Out of Browser technology and WPF ClickOnce on the surface have similarities. Easy and simple deployment, the ability to specify the level of trust access to the underlying host, etc.
What are the key issues I need to consider when choosing one over the other?
To put a finer point on it, I'll be deploying LOB apps on a corporate network running only windows computers.
The big one is cross platform compatibility. If you need you app to run on a mac as well as windows (not sure if Silverlight is supported in Linux yet) then use Silverligt. If you want to make an assumption that all your users will be in a windows machine then go WPF.
Obviously WPF has a much richer toolkit than silverlight so it may well be that silverlight just isn't an option. If I was just building for windows though I know my job would be easier in WPF.
Given that you are targetting a private infrastructure running Windows, two points worth thinking about
Wpf has a richer control tree, whereas Silverlight is a reduced set for compact size
Wpf requires .Net framework installed locally, whereas Silverlight has its own platform independent browser-based runtime
While your target platform will likely have the latest .Net framework installed, rendering this last point moot, keep in mind any updates to the framework [ie .Net4.0 and any future updates] may require a restart of the machine - which is a major pain point for businesses that demand constant-on stateful desktops [ie anything in finance, like banks and trading].
As with all problems, your requirements, not the technology, should inform your solution. :)
You mentioned trust access to the host which I think rules out Silverlight unless you want to run SL4 (beta).
We recently went through a lot of discussion about file system access. Silverlight 3 runs in a partial trust sandbox more or less. You can't maintain a pointer to files in the files system outside of your application's isolated storage. This was an issue for us as we wanted the user to be able to use the application to reference odds and ends on your file system. That said you can allow the users to load and save files from anywhere on the system but you just get/or push the file stream and (to the best of my knowledge) don't have access to the folder or file path information.
Silverlight 4 (in beta) has support for your application running in full trust mode. I haven't played with this yet however and can't speak to how well it works.
In talking with a lot of people who work with both Silverlight and WPF, even those who are excited about Silverlight and push for it strongly, I hear a lot of the say fairly emphatically that if you are going to be developing exclusively for a full-trust Windows environment, WPF is hands-down the obvious choice.
That's not to say that Silverlight is an inferior product or that there aren't times will Silverlight will be the clear winner. But when you say "I'll be deploying LOB apps on a corporate network running only windows computers," it sounds like WPF is the clear winnder.
You could decide to go down the Silverlight route in anticipation of all of the great new OOB feature os SL4. I've even heard rumors that SL and WPF will eventually merge, so it may not even really matter, right? Well, I think what you'll find if you go with Silverlight is that some of the advanced features that you thought were there weren't there in the way you expected. For example, SL4 will be able to run in "Elevated Trust" (not full trust) and you might find this limiting at a frustrating point in the project where a lot of your code base is already in Silverlight.
Certainly keep your eyes on Silverlight, but for your current business case, WPF will likely be the best fit.
I have a small project that I will be working on shortly that collects employees time and what project the person was working on. Pretty straight forward. I was orginally going to work on it in WinForms but since im new to that I though maybe using Silverlight for the application since I will have a learning curve for each. Here is a couple of business requirements that i need to incorporate into the application.
-System will use an Access database hosted on a particular persons computer.
-Ability to generate and print reports
-Installed on the emploees desktop who will have access.
Would one technology be recommended over the other in terms of what I need to do. Here is a screen mockup of one of the pages I will need to create.
http://teewebco.com/images/main-copy.png
If you want access to the machine on which the application will run (e.g. to access a database, and to use printing), that pretty much rules out Silverlight, without jumping through a lot of hoops (e.g. having to install something on the user's machine anyway).
You say that WinForms will require a learning curve for you - well you might as well use WPF then, as it's a similar technology from the UI perspective as Silverlight. However, you can proably find a lot more resources online for WinForms though, and it's likely you'd be more productive in WinForms given its strong Visual Studio designer support.
Deployment with WinForms or WPF should be fairly easy with ClickOnce.
Since it's a local (desktop) app which needs to access a local resource (Access database), it's probably better to do winforms.
However, you might be better off doing this as WPF instead - it's more current than winforms.
Winforms and WPF are easier than Silverlight when you have to access a database because you can do it directly. If your install base uses only .net 2.0 then stick with WinForms, if you know they can install .NET 3.5 then try out WPF. Just be warned, there is more to learn with WPF and XAML but it's very rewarding especially if you want to get fancy.
Silverlight 3 lets your application to run on desktop as well.
So I'd write it on silverlight. Yet another technology to master.
We are planning to build a new integration component that can provide us access to user's machine installed apps from our web site.
The first word that came to me was ActiveX, but our expertise with the technology was not the best in the past.
Thinkink a lit bit more, the work Silverlight also came to my head, but the full trust thing was one of the few things I remembered reading about the technology..
The question is: is there a way that Silverlight (2, 3, 4, whatever) can run as a full trusted application from within the browser?
Links are appreciated.
Filipe
Unfortunately, no. Full trust is a feature of Silverlight 4, currently in beta, and is restricted to out-of-browser applications.
Additionally, full trust SL4 applications do not have unrestricted access to the system (particularly file system), though this may change before before release (if I have anything to do with it).
Edit: If you are considering ActiveX (which is Windows/IE only), you might want to have a look at WPF, since it can run full trust from the browser (if it's in a trusted zone).
No, like Richard said, this is not at all possible inside the browser, even in SL4. There is a sandbox, and you live in it. You can talk to web services, other Silverlight applications or the browser.
By talking to the browser, I mean you can talk to the DOM and the Javascript engine. We needed to launch a Windows application and communicate to it via Silverlight. We accomplished this by putting a small ActiveX control in the web page. It is responsible for launching the WinForms application and handling inter-process communication to it.
This method has many drawbacks: It can only work in IE, and it only works in Windows. You might also run into permissions issues. The ActiveX component needs to be installed along with the desktop application, or as an additional download. The deployment story there is pretty awful, if you ask me.
In our case, the analysts were willing to deal with the restrictions for the re-usability of an existing application, and we consider it to be an optional feature.
Does it have to be a web application? sounds like you want a desktop app. It can be easiliy distributed with one Click deployment. Will work on windows only but since you were considering ActiveX sounds like that's what you need.
Well - if you're hosting the silverlight control from an ASP.NET application - Believe you have access to
Request.ServerVariables["AUTH_USER"];
...and you can pass that on to your control as a parameter.
D