CSLA .NET 3.6 for Windows and for Silverlight is released!


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17 December 2008

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I have released version 3.6 of CSLA .NET for Windows and CSLA .NET for Silverlight.

This is a major update to CSLA .NET, because it supports Silverlight, but also because there are substantial enhancements to the Windows/.NET version.

To my knowledge, this is also the first release of a major development framework targeting the Silverlight platform.

Here are some highlights:

  • Share more than 90% of your business object code between Windows and Silverlight
  • Powerful new UI controls for WPF, Silverlight and Windows Forms
  • Asynchronous data portal, to enable object persistence on a background thread (required in Silverlight, optional in Windows)
  • Asynchronous validation rules
  • Enhanced indexing in LINQ to CSLA
  • Numerous performance enhancements

This version of CSLA .NET for Windows is covered in my new Expert C# 2008 Business Objects book (Expert VB 2008 Business Objects is planned for February 2009).

At this time there is no book covering CSLA .NET for Silverlight. However, most business object code (other than data access) is the same for Windows and Silverlight, so you will find the Expert C# 2008 Business Objects book very valuable for Silverlight as well. I am in the process of creating a series of training videos around CSLA .NET for Silverlight, watch for those in early 2009.

Version 3.6 marks the first time major development was done by a team of people. My employer, Magenic, has been a patron of CSLA .NET since the year 2000, but with this version they provided me with a development team and that is what enabled such a major version to be created in such a relatively short period of time. You can see a full list of contributors, but I specifically want to thank Sergey Barskiy, Justin Chase and Nermin Dibek because they are the primary contributors to 3.6. I seriously couldn’t have asked for a better team!

This is also the first version where the framework code is only in C#. The framework can be used from any .NET language, including VB, C# and others, but the actual framework code is in C#.

There is a community effort underway to bring the VB codebase in sync with version 3.6, but at this time that code will not build. In any case, the official version of the framework is C#, and that is the version I recommend using for any production work.

In some ways version 3.6 is one of the largest release of the CSLA .NET framework ever. If you are a Windows/.NET developer this is a natural progression from previous versions of the framework, providing better features and capabilities. If you are a Silverlight developer the value of CSLA .NET is even greater, because it provides an incredible array of features and productivity you won’t find anywhere else today.

As always, if you are a new or existing CSLA .NET user, please join in the discussion on the CSLA .NET online forum.