This is the first of a series of reviews that will cover what is contained in the DevExpress DXperience Universal Edition. This is the most complete of the subscription packages available from DevExpress. The other packages include Enterprise, WinForms, and ASP.NET. For a matrix of what each package contains, check out their edition page. In this first review I will examine the application frameworks that are available.
There are two frameworks that come with the Universal edition. The first is the eXpressApp Framework (XAF) which is used for creating business applications quickly. This is only available in the Universal edition. The second is the eXpress Persistent Objects (XPO) framework that acts as a bridge between your objects and the world of database access. This is available as part of the Universal or as a standalone product.
What is eXpressApp Framework (XAF)
The XAF is a framework that will allow you to build business applications quickly and easily. It will give you a standardized look much like the Microsoft Outlook product, but also has a lot of flexibility to control the look. Through the use of a strong modular architecture it allows for platform-independent domain-specific extensions. Currently you can create business applications that can currently support both WinForms and ASP.NET 2.0 platforms. In the future these will include other platforms like Window Presentation Foundation (WPF).
What do you need to run eXpressApp Framework?
• Visual Studio 2005/2008 (.NET 2+)
• .NET Framework 3 is required for design-time Editor
You can create your own software from scratch. This is what a lot of companies do. It is a lot of hard work, time, and expense, but in the end you have all of the code, knowledge, and expertise. You could also buy a third party platform, but along with being expensive, it usually has a lot of features that you will never use, and you have to learn how to code around someone else's idea of best practices, and that can take time.
EXpressApp Framework is meant to be the cross between these two types of systems. You still have to write code, but instead of using someone else's vision of the perfect application, you create your own application by leveraging the use of libraries to shorten the development time.
In any application you generally have to set up datasets, grids, entry forms, and create the whole structure to handle it all. This is where XAF comes in. It gives you the structure, the forms, the datasets, grids, and a whole lot more. This in turn lets you concentrate of the business logic.
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