Hello,

Has anyone experienced ExtJs with LLBLGen objects?

You'll probably want to explain waht ExtJ's are? (Something Java related I pressume) ?

Hello Otis,

Here it comes,

Ext JS is a cross-browser JavaScript library for building rich internet applications.

*  High performance, customizable UI widgets
* Well designed, documented and extensible Component model
* Commercial and Open Source licenses available

url http://www.extjs.com/

my idea would be converting devexpress components ( currently in use on production side, suffering performance ) to extJS components.

Best Regards, Hasan

A .NET implementation of ExtJs can be found at:

http://www.coolite.com

however, it's a very immature product. Good for strategic planning, but it's at least a year away from really working.

(How immature? Current build is capable of crashing Visual Studio. It's that bad. Maybe in the future...)

@swallace - Thanks once again for the feedback and your opinions. I disagree with your assumptions regarding Coolite.

Here's the thread swallace was referring to, see http://www.coolite.com/forums/Topic859-5-1.aspx

I forgot to mention...

If anyone is interested in using the Coolite Toolkit to test with LLBLGen and would like some one-on-one technical assistance and a copy of the latest build, please feel free to email directly (geoff [at] coolite [dot] com) and I'll do my best to help out. Or, jump into the forums (http://www.coolite.com/forums).

The GridPanel is just about ready for our preview release v0.6 which supports binding to just about everything and will really shine with an o/r mapper pushing data.

Well, MS' own WPF controls also make VS.NET die on a regular basis, so crashing vs.net isn't that hard, but anything that gets shoved into the IDE and makes it die is something not usable at the level where software has to be written to make things work at a company.

That said, the only thing all these Javascript/ajax UI controls should make sure of is that the controls controlling the data they're editing and showing is on the server and should work as if the grid is rendered on the server as well, so with support for datasource controls. If that's covered, it should work OK, though that's the bottom line: no datasource control support, no love.

I lost count of how many times 3rd party controls all of a sudden lost track of where the data came from they're working with in complex web page scenario's so no data was saved, or no data was loaded through our datasource controls, especially in ajax scenario's where there's no real postback done and which row represented which object isn't always properly tracked by these controls. So I truly hope ExtJ works as expected, because we can't possibly debug our code for every possible ajax lib out there, we follow MS' guidelines and 'standards' (for what they're worth) and one of them is how datasourcecontrols work (although it's poorly documented by MS).

Hello to all,

Thanks for answers and your time.

sekorev wrote:

Has anyone experienced ExtJs with LLBLGen objects?

I have experience with both. I would definitely recommend that you try to keep them both in the areas where they are intended to be used: - ExtJS is a JavaScript framework library for developing rich client-side (browser) interactions/applications. - LLBL Gen is a server-side framework for creating a feature-rich data-access tier and business objects.

While LLBLGen Pro is designed with and for the .NET framework and all of the nuances of Microsoft's vision of databinding, state tracking, events, etc., ExtJS has no concept of how Microsoft and ASP.NET are supposed to work.

While there are several people/groups (like Coolite) working to make ExtJS work with the ASP.NET world, it can be an uphill battle. The Page/Postback model of ASP.NET is completely different than standard web development techniques that you encounter on other platforms so it is often a challenge (frustratingly so) to make them meet and work together.

My advice would be to keep them separate (not take LLBLGen objects/entities to the client) and have some type of abstraction layer between the two. In theory, you would have ASP.NET emit some basic page info and then let ExtJS do all of the client side presentation magic. Then, this would be where data transfer objects (DTOs) and web services would come into play. Let ExtJS be responsible for managing state and objects on the client and then have logic there to determine what needs to be passed back to the server.

Of course, you definitely should tap into Geoffrey's offer of assistance. They (Coolite) have been working with ExtJS for a while to get a VS.NET version going so they will definitely bring a lot of knowledge to the table.

While our application (MyHomePoint) is built around ASP.NET, we've had a fair number of conversations about moving away from the platform to get away from all of the helpful features like postback, viewstate, hierarchical ID names, etc.

And just for reference: LLBL mattsmith321 = ExtJS mattsmith

Oh, and one more point of observation: Frans is to O/R mappers as Jack is to JavaScript. They are both crazy good in their respective fields. I am unfortuntely not doing active development with either LLBL or ExtJS right now, but I still make it a point to keep tabs on what both products are doing on a regular basis.

I hope that helps.

Matt