Investigating Smart Client Software Factory Part 1

At work we are currently developing a new tool to configure our webapplication. The data is contained in a SqlExpress database and is accessed using Linq2Sql. We are going to implement MVC in the website so it seems a good idea to implement a Model View Presenter pattern in the Config tool.

Installation Experience

I had to do 2 installations: One at work and one on my laptop to test it.
At work I run XP Pro and all went just fine with that. Just a matter of running installers for the Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX), the Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) and the Smart Client Software Factory - April 2008 (SCSF). And that was it...

On my laptop however, it did not go so great. I ran the GAX self-extracter and the GAT and SCSF msi's, but to no avail. I could not find the Guidance automation manager in tools menu of VS and no Guidance Automation project types in the Project template list.

The solution seemed simple: reinstall everything. But the remove option of GAX gave me the message: 'This installer requires Visual Studio which is not present on the computer. Please install it and try again'

I found a post by malcolm.ellis here and that pointed me in the right direction. I ran the self-extracter with elevated mode and than it did finish the uninstall.

After that I decided to not take any chances and ran all the installers in elevated mode. And finally it finished en look and behold: the menu-items and the project types appear as they should.

Hello World Application

As starting of without any knowledge of what to do didn't really work out. I followed the very usefull Hello World example which can be found on CodePlex.

But as I always say: it isn't fun if it isn't usefull! So soon I will extend and refactor the Hello World App to a somewhat more usefull School Admin System for my wife.