.NET v3.0 (WinFX)
About maybe a year ago I started to read about the then up and coming technologies of Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system but I never really gave them that much attention due to the fact I thought they were only going to be part of Windows Vista. With the money businesses invested in moving from NT to XP I really didn't see Vista being rolled out as a replacement for XP Professional.
A few weeks back though I read another article that said the technologies of Vista (code named Indigo, Avalon, etc) had been packaged up and released under the new term.NET v3.0. I made a mental note to return and have a better read about what .NET v3.0 really was all about and today I did that, partly because I found this article on MSDN.
Introducing the .NET Framework 3.0
So what did I find out... well I tell you one of the most nicest things I found out about .NET v3.0, and I like this a lot, is the ability to define and create user interfaces using an XML language called eXtensible Application Markup Language (XAML). I think thats a really really nice thing to be able to do, and heres why....
First of all it basically makes Windows applications compatible with the DOM, so just as an HTML web page can be queried using methods like GetElementByID so can the user interface of a Windows application. This means that code which needs to access both a Windows and Web front end won't require that much alteration as both front ends are accessible in the same way.
But thats not really the thing that stood out the most. What I liked the most about XAML is since XAML is just an XML language then it can be changed using DOM, XSLT and/or XQuery. My programming studies was heavy involved with Artifical Intelligence and part of that covered the idea of intelligent user interfaces.
These are interfaces which are capable of changing themselves to suit the user needs. So for example, if the user consistantly uses a series of commands all the time then the user interface would be intelligent enough to alter itself so that the commands would be combined and perhaps placed under a new toolbar button. I thought this idea was great but I could never work out how you could code changes to compiled forms stored in executables or DLL's. With XAML, without knowing the full facts, it now looks possible to write code that changes forms dynamically. Nice!
There are other nice benefits of defining forms using XML but there is something else I want to cover; Windows Workflow Foundation.
The theory behind this is developed software has a certain flow of activities, like a flow chart, like a use case. Do A, then do B and if the result of C is D then do E. Currently developers not only need to build the tasks A, B, C, D and E into their software but they also need to build the flow i.e. if the result of C is D then E, and so on. The idea behind Workflow Foundation is to seperate out the code that performs the flow process and let a seperate engine do it. So for example rather than writing the code that controls the flow why not draw a flowchart that tells the engine the flow through the various tasks with in the software. So not only are you documenting the design of the software by doing so your creating the software.
I might not be explaining that fully so please read the Introduction article when you get time as it has all the diagrams you need and much better explanations of all the new technologies of .NET v3.0. It's also worth while to start looking into these new technologies because Microsoft has decided to use them in their own software, Office 2007, Share Point Services and BizTalk Server are all going to be developed to use these new WinFx technologies. So worth a read.
If your looking to get a hold of .NET v3.0 here is the link. http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/downloads/products/golive/resources/