Building data-driven applications in the .NET space that rely on ORM can be a challenge. One such product which has gained a following is DevForce from IdeaBlade. DevForce is targeted squarely at accelerating the building of N-tier applications on the .NET platform. With it’s most recent release of DevForce 3.6.2 they added support for Visual Studio 2008. InfoQ spoke with IdeaBlade CEO/co-founder, Albert Wang.
In relation to the release of DevForce 3.6.2, Wang indicated the following value proposition:
DevForce is an enterprise-class application server and development framework that adds n-tier persistence capabilities to .NET and provides the infrastructure to build and deploy data-driven RIAs for WinForms and WPF. Key features include n-tier ORM and persistence, intelligent client-side caching, offline capabilities, data binding, validation, web services, multiple data sources, security, and a scalable object server that plugs into IIS.
As to the new features in this release of DevForce 3.6.2, Wang stated, “This release adds data binding support for the latest version of the Infragistics NetAdvantage and Developer Express DXperience control suites.”
DevForce EF, currently in beta, builds on IdeaBlade’s technology investment and extends their framework to now include support for the Entity Framework and LINQ.
DevForce EF is meant to add RIA capabilities to IdeaBlade product family and will provide support for Silverlight. Wang’s stated intention for DevForce EF:
DevForce EF, now in Beta 1, adds n-tier capabilities to the ADO.NET Entity Framework, and includes all of the key features from DevForce 3.6.2. DevForce EF will also be supporting Silverlight, enabling a Silverlight application to leverage LINQ and the Entity Framework and allows developers to easily query and work with a true domain object model within a Silverlight application.
Julie Lerman is impressed with IdeaBlade's work thus far:
I'm actually very happy to see someone prove that the EDM and the Entity Framework can be used (even if it takes some tweaking) in real enterprise applications.