Patterns in Action 4.0 vs 4.5

Hi to all,

I would like to ask many questions regarding your latest product "Design Pattern Framework CS 4.5" but I don't know from where should I start. I have to admit that I am a little bit disappointed about the direction of that product. I read in another topic "Where are WCF Services??" which I totally agree and I read a reply that "the product is designed to inform developers about the latest architecture, patterns, and best practices trends in .NET development". For sure it is nice to get familiar with the new trends or where the industry is going but keep in mind that enterprise applications can not use the Web API (a.k.a. old WCF Rest Services) still for various reasons. All applications are not related with just exposing some web services, but maybe they are core systems that are exchanging huge amount of data with other systems via network(TCP, Pipe)/web etc. Even more keep in mind that some old trends are dead now (e.g. Silverlight).

What I want to say is that your product should not refer, always, to the latest trends but as a guide, how things should be implemented. I totally agreed that now it is simplified but many important things are missing. I was very surprised that DTO's are missing and that you are exposing the business classes (a.k.a. domain, model, entities etc) to the client (especially when you use web api). The theory says that the real database schema should not be exposed to the client at any cost.

Long story short, my summarized question is this: Do you feel that going to the direction of simplifying things and following trends might miss the purpose of the product which is mostly educational??

With kind regards,
An admirer of your work.

Panagiotis Tsougkaris, Jan 07, 2014

Reply 1

Angel:

Our subscribers are getting access to all prior versions: .NET 4.5, 4.0, 3.5, 2.0, and 1.0.

So when you find that you need DTOs, SOAP, Dynamic Linq or any other feature not present in the latest release you can easily reference these in the 4.0 or older version. The patterns in all prior versions are still 'valid', especially because in the Enterprise environment developers are dealing with legacy apps that need support and maintenance for a long time to come.

Jack

Jack Poorte, Feb 02, 2014

Reply 2

I think there are more differences between v40 and v45, all the way from the architecture to implemented patterns and coding best practices

The Design Pattern Framework 4.5 seems simpler, cleaner, but at the same time lacks samples that v4 had, such as DTOs in BL, Security Tokens, Adapter Pattern in DL, General Log functionality, Encryption, Image services, Hosting layer, and more

With the inclusion of the Web Api, and removing WCF the developers decided to go for simplistic sample vs detail sample. That and the fact that the Web Api is new and certain things are not well defined yet.

So I am continuously going back to v4 for some references not existing in v45

Angel Valdes, Jan 29, 2014

I got rid of the Take helper method and just applied the parameters I needed per method. Example: object[] parms = { "@memberId", smid }; return DbAdapterHRMS.ReadFromStoredProcedure(proc, Make, parms); Thanks Dennis

Sep 24, 2012

Reply 3

Hello Panagiotis:

Thank you for your detailed feedback. Much appreciated. It will help us in making the right decisions for the upcoming releases.

As far as WCF vs Web API, I would like to point out this article. It summarizes the issues you mentioned in a very balanced manner. Clearly, the industry is highly dynamic and very much in flux right now. Just look at Silverlight which has completely fallen off the map in the last year or so.

Anyhow, again thanks for your feedback.
Jack

Jack Poorte, Jan 09, 2014