Hello, Allow me to highlight Erik Radmall's analysis how XAML compares to Spring. Erik writes:
Another area I've looked into is using Spring in a XAML world. I have MS XAML on my system (along with MyXaml and Xamlon), and have investigated ways to make XAML play nicely with Spring, since for myself and many others I suspect this will be important when XAML officially ships. It certainly makes sense for me to use XAML for parts of my application, and I've even tested wiring my application's entire window structure using XAML, but will realistically have to wait for MS to release the official version to deploy it. One inescapable conclusion of this exercise is that there is a lot of overlap between XAML and Spring. XAML, for example, provides component wiring and dependency resolution of object graphs like Spring, long with event wiring like Spring, along with a bunch of other useful features to the UI layer, like event routing that includes event bubbling and tunneling to UI controls which Spring does not provide (which are really UI specific). Overall I think there are areas where XAML is really nice. You can insert "code behind" in the XML declarations, which incidentally might be a nice addition to Spring. There are also areas where XAML is not so hot, with its broken XML syntax of dot notation for compound properties, which is a design choice I find difficult to understand, and its lack of object lifecycle semantics such differentiating between singleton or prototype, or init-method or destroy-method lifecycle features provided by the Spring container, which something I was not able to find in the XAML documentation or examples. It does not seem that XAML has been seriously considered as a platform beyond the creation and hosting of Windows forms controls, so this does not appear to be an oversight, rather a design choice. I should mention that the lifecycle features Spring provides are essential to our UI application, so replacing Spring with XAML as the container will not work for us, and if I were to use XAML is it, I would still need to find a way to XAML and Spring cooperate. If XAML were extended to provide Spring's lifecycle features, then it would be an obvious choice as a container strategy, since it would then provide the same vital services as Spring provides my application now. As part of the investigation I also took a look at the source for MyXaml, and even hacked it a tad to allow the MyXaml to instantiate a Spring object via the XAML ref="object" tag within my .xaml definition. This was entertaining, if perhaps a little silly. It did, however, serve to illustrate just how similar the two ideas are--that if XAML just did X, or Spring just did Y, you could dispense with using two overlapping technologies and simply use one. One real possibility is to allow Spring to use its config in the same way XAML does. I will plumb this in a bit and see what's feasible--the only issue I see currently is there is no way to identify the main window(s) within the Spring config, but if this issue were resolved somehow it would be possible to use Spring in the same was as XAML. One thing that seems pretty apparent is that XAML by itself is not a terribly advanced or amazing technology--and it's certainly weaker in the areas of object lifecycle semantics than Spring. One advantage it does have over Spring is that it's going to be supported by the Big House as a core platform, and that means there will be a slew of integration tools and general industry support for its model, and this is always an important consideration. I'm still looking into the plugins idea as well, since there may be something useful there--my only concern is not wanting to reinvent any wheels, and consider any UI-related issues in light of the roadmap for .NET, which includes XAML as a core strategy. Source: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.windows.dotnet.spring.devel What's your take? Do you agree with Erik Radmall's assessment that XAML by itself is not a terribly advanced or amazing technology--and it's certainly weaker in the areas of object lifecycle semantics than Spring? - Gerald ----------------------- Gerald Bauer United XAML - http://unitedxaml.org XAML Forum & News - http://xamlnews.com ------------------------------------------------------- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest & candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/ _______________________________________________ xul-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xul-talk
