BLD leverages what you already know

Usually when you get a third party control suite, you have to learn a few web controls, applying past knowledge and taking advantage of Visual Studio’s design mode to help you identify useful properties and event handlers.

When working with BLD, you are working with a framework that has much more than web controls. You must plan on learning new techniques. Here’s how BLD’s design assists you.

• You still build the user interface is using ASP.NET web controls. You still add controls, set their properties and attach event handlers in familiar ways.
• If you have used ASP.NET Dynamic Data, you have learned much of BLD’s approach. After all, BLD was adapted from the ASP.NET Dynamic Data framework. You will replace key Dynamic Data controls with their BLD equivalents: DynamicControl -> BLDDataField, DynamicFilter -> BLDFilterField, DynamicDataManager -> BLDPageManager, etc.

  You still use Field and Filter Template files, located in the BLD Templates folder instead of the DynamicData folder.

• ASP.NET Web Forms implements a powerful two way databinding system by using “DataBound controls” like ListView and FormView and “DataSource controls” like LinqDataSource and EntityDataSource. BLD is based on this model. You can still use these same controls, although you may end up using BLD’s more powerful BLDListView, BLDFormView, and EntityDAODataSource controls. BLD also eliminates the actual databinding code as it handles two-way databinding internally.
• Microsoft introduced the DataAnnotation attributes in ASP.NET 3.5. If you have used MVC or ASP.NET Dynamic Data, you are familiar with them. BLD uses these DataAnnotation attributes in the same way. It also adds numerous new and improved DataAnnotations attributes.
• Business logic is almost entirely handled by programming. If your team has people with different skill sets, the business logic should be delegated to OOP programmers. Most of the time, you will be subclassing. Typical programming tasks:
  • Creating Entity classes and Data Access Objects. These are often generated for you within Visual Studio.
  • Assigning DataAnnotation attributes
  • Creating new DataAnnotation attributes, especially custom validation rules
  • Creating “Select methods”, methods on your Data Access Objects that query your database. If you are using a LINQ based data access framework like LINQ to SQL or EntityFramework, you will need skills in LINQ.

BLD is designed to get the job done

BLD is an extensive framework, with its own approach and constraints to achieving the goal of building a data entry Web Forms. Peter knows the horrible feeling of building most of your application, only to discover late in the process that a requirement is prevented by a limitation of tools. As a result, he's built BLD to be greatly expandable.

• Source code is included and is recommended to be used so you can debug your applications easily.
• Source code is extensively documented. Peter habitually writes documentation as each method or property is introduced.
• The API has been refined over several years to ensure easy subclassing. (Peter has often been frustrated by how difficult it is to subclass the ASP.NET API, due to private, internal and non-vitualized methods, along with methods that are too large and need to be refactored.)
• Peter’s free tech support not only can offer you insights into using the sources, but also allows Peter to tweak the API based on customer feedback. He endevours to keep from breaking the API while delivering improvements.
• The API makes extensive use of Interfaces. In many cases, you can replace the original class with your own by taking advantage of Interfaces.
• There are numerous event handlers to take actions without the need to subclass.

Finally, the documentation is massive. You can learn with the online site including a Guided Tour and from a 2000+ page User's Guide, full of examples and walkthroughs in C# and VB.