I am currently learning Cocoa. However I am coming from a traditional Sybase/Oracle background using Powerbuilder. Having been spoiled by the 'power' of a datawindow for may years, I not sure that coredata or sqllite will satisfy my needs and ideas.
Basically I'm looking for some good reference sites, books, or just plain old advice on how to approach database development with Cocoa.
Any comments and advice are welcomed.
This is a pretty broad topic, but if you want to go down the Core Data route, check out this book http://pragprog.com/titles/mzcd/core-data
Core Data published by Pragmatic.
Core Data is a persistence solution that is highly object oriented and integrated with cocoa. In my opinion it is relatively easy to implement basic persistence with it.
Marcus Zarra, the author of the book I recommended also has a great Cocoa blog with lots of Core Data resources: http://www.cimgf.com/category/core-data/
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Assume a mechanic wants to start developing in silverlight and has managed to make a few sample childish applications.
What resources would you recommend to make him an expert?
Generally speaking becoming an expert will involve years of training, lots of trial and error, and working on a large-scale applications always helps. For some good resources, you might want to check out things like the Enterprise Library update for Silverlight which contains some good examples of architecture and scenarios you might encounter:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=7319
Otherwise the Prism framework/guidance from Microsoft Patterns and Practices offers some information and examples on basic scenarios you might run into:
http://compositewpf.codeplex.com/
And lastly, stepping a bit outside of these examples you might want to try a book like Silverlight 4 Business Intelligence Software by Bart Czernicki. It covers a lot of concepts for one type of SL scenario but the scope of the topics and exploration of concepts + framework is quite good:
http://www.amazon.com/Silverlight-4-Business-Intelligence-Software/dp/1430230606/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311760201&sr=8-1
You can also find a slew of experts on places like Twitter, try following someone like #Wynapse who does excellent daily coverage and can help you expand out to other experts in the area.
It's possible to find tutorials on MVVM and DI, somewhat harder about getting Data from database properly into GUI.
Finding something that talks about all these things and how they integrate is near impossible.
I guess some people will say that it doesn't matter and all stands independently but I don't believe it. Especially considering MVVM and Data as I find keeping a tight grip on data managing while doing MVVM to be the hardest part.
So is there anything I could use, and I don't wan't some small simple problem solved but something near complete, at least steps from DB to GUI dynamically done. I'm willing to pay for such a book.
You could look at Prism guidance provided by Microsoft Patterns & Practice group. Prism is actually complete architectural approach to build enterprise level solutions. But it contains StockTrader Reference Implementation application that is built using DI, MVVM and includes interaction with data storage (they use XML files as data storage to provide easy distribution, but it really doesn't matter what data storage is used). Also, the guidance contains several small quickstart projects which emphasize particular part of the architecture. There is comprehensive documentation and active community around Prism, so you can find answers to any question. And it is completely free.
Among many other things my book Dependency Injection in .NET discusses all of those things. However, the subjects is DI first and foremost, with MVVM and data access only incidentals. However, you may find some of the code examples accompanying the book helpful.
In addition to Prism guidance already mentioned, I highly recommend Karl Shifflett's MVVM In-the-Box tutorial. It has great content and also encourages you to experiment with code as you progress through the topics (it is integrated with Visual Studio).
You might be interested in the BookLibrary sample application of the WPF Application Framework (WAF). The BookLibrary shows how to use MVVM, DI with MEF and data management with Entity Framework and SQL Compact Edition.
I have mostly been a Database developer but to enhance my personal skills and to develop a windows application I am trying to learn the new things in .NET. A few years back I devloped a POS in C# 2.0. The only thing that I recall using in terms of a pattern or existing code library was the Data Library provided by Microsoft.
I am trying now to write a rule-based engine that has a good UI for the business user and performs very well, when processing the rules. One of the things I have decided to use is WPF.
The choice comes from reading at multiple places that it is the next step, and it seems to give a lot of options in creating Visio like diagarms.
Where I confused at is with these other technologies, design patterns and best practices:
MVVM
EF
WCF
WF
and there are a few more.
I am trying to look for a article or something that explains how these things work together and what is the best combination to use and why?
Thanks,
Without a lot of information to work with, I'd suggest you check out a few Microsoft patterns & practices (p&p) guidance releases that could help you design your solution well and also follow Microsoft's best practices.
The titles I'd recommend include:
Microsoft Application Architecture Guide (2nd Edition)
-- This will help you with the basic architecture and design of your application. The sections on service development (chapter 9) and workflow (chapter 14) should at least provide you with the basics to start with, and also provide you with some next steps on further research or additional information. There's also some mention of data access technologies, and briefly touches on EF, but you may be better off just consulting the data developer center on MSDN for specifics about EF.
Developer's Guide to Microsoft Prism (Nov 2010)
-- This will help you out with architecting your WPF app so that it's loosely coupled, and also provides information and guidance on MVVM (chapters 5 and 6)
I think these two resources will give you a good start on how to best use the various frameworks and technologies together.
Hopefully this gives you a good start. Let me know if there are more questions and I'll update my answer accordingly.
Currently as my job profile i am more working on asp .net application but i also wanted to have my hands on silverlight application. so, i just decided to build one silverlight 4 application in my spare time and on weekends.
We are having a team of around 4 people. We also tried for commercial application but as we can only develop it in our available time we can not commit on timeline as well as we people are new to SL, so first we need to learn concept and implement it. (Though we know the concept of binding, commanding,templates etc.)
Now i just thought to work on project like creating a social networking site in SL 4
having facilities like forum, blogs, calander, task, dashboard etc.
We want to use features like .Net RIA Service, Entity Framework, MVVM pattern, SL 4.
Objective here is to learn new concepts as well as to get some good project experince in silverlight.
Now,
what you people suggest is it a good idea ?
If yes then the project selected is correct or you suggest some other project ?
Any pattern or technology related suggestions ?
This is quite a vague set of questions but I'll attempt to give my 2 pennies worth of advice.
As a learning project this is as good an idea as any to get going with. As a commercial idea it probably isn't such a good one due to there not being any niche in your product. It has all already been done, and been done successfully by the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Developing any kind of social media site is incredibly difficult as the market is already fairly saturated. As I said though, as a learning project it's quite nice as you can just borrow concepts and ideas from other sites and you can concentrate on you main goals of gaining knowledge in the various technologies.
Whatever you decide to do I'd say split the project up into much smaller components rather than having the end goal in sight. Try to take more of an agile approach by setting yourself 2-3 week targets. It should help keep the momentum going. My experience is that learning projects tend to die a death as people get bored of the concept and lose motivation to do it. By keeping the tasks small you get to see small results often. This should help keep you motivated as you move from requirement to requirement.
Personally I think setting up personal projects and goals like this are a great way of learning new technologies - good for you!! :-)
From a tooling perspective it sounds like SL4 is an ideal route to follow. This is highly likely to be released in early 2010 and has some awesome new features compared to SL3. Would also recommend using VS2010 and WCF RIA Service too.
From a code sharing POV have you considered hosting your project on Codeplex? This will give you a hosted TFS server to manage your source code in a distributed way. This is bound to save you some big bucks.
As far as document management is concerned Google Docs are certainly worth a look (as is Google Sites as a really easy to set up (albeit simple) project management portal).
Finally, I can't recommend learning SketchFlow highly enough. As a prototyping tool for silverlight it is really, really cool. Take a look at the PDC video for a great kick start on this.
Good luck :-)
I'm getting ready to develop my first Silverlight app. It is going to be primarily used by my church for data input but also will need to generate at least one report, ideally in Excel but XML/XSLT is not outside the realm...
It will be Internet facing and will talk to a SQL Server 2008 db for which I will be creating a web service hosted at the ISP (db is also hosted at the ISP). The clients will be a mix of Windows and Mac.
My question specifically relates to the interface architecture. I know MVVM is big for this right now and I'm comfortable with that. I want to get this up fairly quickly (ie- next 3-4 weeks). I've also seen mention of Prism (Composite Application Guidance) and Caliburn. What are anyone's thoughts on these two? The initial version of the app is not going to be huge so I don't imagine it would be overly difficult to refactor a framework into it at a later date.
You are right, if it's your first development on SL, adding the complexity of MVVM won't help you much.
I think a good approach could be to go for something simple (e.g.: the good old Document/View could be just a good start http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4x1xy43a(VS.80).aspx, or just breaking in standard layers, UI / BS / DL).
After that development you will have learnt a lot of good stuff, and then you will be able to throw your app and start new bigger challenges using more advanced architectures (about MVVM, a very good web cast: http://blog.lab49.com/archives/2650 it's WPF based most of the concepts can be ported to SL).
Good luck and enjoy for SL development.
Cheers
Braulio
Start with something you are very comfortable with especially if you need to get this up quickly. Follow good coding standards and should not be a problem to refactor later into other frameworks if you get a bigger team.
This is a useful pdf.
I haven't read it in detail yet myself, but this article looks rather useful:
RIA Architecture with Silverlight in mind