Morning precon with Rocky Lhotka
Rocky and Billy Hollis ran the morning part of their precon on ".Net Framework 2.0: The Smart Client Perspective". A few highlights:
They put in a strong push towards smart client applications, with processing on the client, vs. browser-based applications, in order to utilize the power of the client machine, retain more security control over data, etc.
Rocky spent some time going over new databinding features in .Net 2. Much of it I was already familiar with, but there were a few interesting comments:
- push of the new RAD development stuff as actually useful - Rocky was skeptical at first but is now convinced that Microsoft has done enough things right that the new auto-databinding functionality provides real value on real projects
- Microsoft finally produced a production-application-usable grid, the DataGridView, though there are a couple of things missing for real applications that can easily be remedied by creating your own descendant: Validation error handling on Esc or row change resets row without raising validation events on dataset.
- DataTables are now paired with DataAdapters right in the DataSet definition, with partial class support making them usable as business objects
- With partial classes, you can add interface implementations (so that you can add a level of standardization to implementations of partial classes)
- Naming standards for controls are affected by defaults that MS provides - when you drag data elements from the data sources window onto a form, the resultant controls are named according to a new naming scheme <name of property><name of control> (e.g. NameTextBox, NameLabel...) vs. traditional hungarian standard (txtName, lblName). Rocky actually uses the new standard now in his own development (tough to break old habits, he says...)