Blinq's place in the world

It would really be cool if someone could write a paper with guidance on how to make usage distinctions between all these great new frameworks Microsoft is developing. Right now my mind is boggled trying to grok ASP.NET MVC, Dynamic Data, Subsonic and umpteen other new gems, all coming from the ASP team! The problem spaces for these new things are so similar, I for one could use a pre-digested comparison analysis.

Thanks,

Jeff

Re: Blinq's place in the world

Jeff,

I will forward this on to the documentation team at Microsoft and see if we can have an overview of all the new technologies that we have coming out in the future.

Dynamic Data - This feature is an enhancement of the existin ListView, GridView, FormView and DetailsView controls that add new features such as: Templates to change their look and feel, Automatic validation (string length, null/non-null columns, datatype), converting foreign keys to nice text and dropdown list edits, this can be enhanced via metadata on the data model. Plus there is a scaffolding framwork that can be used to quickly build an admin type site with little or no code.

MVC - This is a new framework for writing application on the ASP.NET platform using the MVC pattern. This new model features a seperation of concerns, very TDDable and gives you full control over the markup. Today this framework is mainly for people building new website that want to take advantage of the items I listed. In it's first version it will not include controls, validatoin.

If you have any specific questions I'm more then happy to answer them

Re: Blinq's place in the world

scothu
If you have any specific questions I'm more then happy to answer them

Blinq is equals than Dynamic Data Project? if not where's difference. Thanks

Re: Blinq's place in the world

Blinq is a the code name for a website generation tool that builds a website based on the data model. In the case of Blinq it builds the actual physical pages for the entire site. The current implementation of Blinq when it builds a site utilizes the Dynamic Data features in the sites it builds (Model Level Annotation, Field Templates, Validation, etc). The negative of such source code generation tools is the resulting site is kind of a one time shot, if you start modifying the site by hand and then decide to re-run the generation tool it will wipe out your changes.

Dynamic Data also had a scaffolding functionality which allows it to DYNAMICALLY scaffold your data model. You can then you metadata and fall back to custom code pages to override the look and feel. The benefit of this style is you don't get nearly as much churn if you modify the data model.