Wanted: Input for the Next Version of my N-Layer Architecture Articles!

It's been more than one and a half year since I released the first version of my articles on N-Layer Design. Since then, the three articles combined have been read well over 200,000 times. Besides generating a lot of page views, the articles also attracted a lot of comments from you, my readers, with great feedback and requests.

Although the main aim of my design has always been to keep things simple and open (that is, no inheritance, no complex serialization code, all code in a single web project, no ADO.NET Entity Framework and so on) I did get a lot of requests for additional code, features and guidance. The most popular requests extracted from the comments are:

  • Validation inside the business objects
  • The ability to sort and page the data
  • Use inheritance to provide a common base class for all business objects
  • Use separate Class Library projects to make it easier to swap layers (and for some people who didn't really understood it all, give the impression of more object orientation and "correctness".)

With these requests in mind, I am considering writing a vNext version of the articles in the next few weeks or months, providing a new .NET 3.5 version of the code base with the following features:

  • A separate project for the web site and two class libraries for the Bll and Dal Layers (since Visual Web Developer 2008 SP1 now supports class library projects).
  • A ValidationBase class to provide common validation logic and implement business rules including the ability to display validation errors in the UI.
  • A BusinessBase to inherit from ValidationBase to provide additional common behavior.
  • Additional overloads and code for sorting and paging in the business objects.
  • The ability to search for contact persons.
  • A localized (e.g. translated) version so it's easier to display validation rules in multiple languages.

I haven't started on the article yet but I am just gathering ideas at this stage. So, if you have a topic you want covered in an upcoming article, now's the time to respond. Send me a message through my Contact page, explain what it is you want covered and in what way (if you have some clear ideas on that) and I'll add your ideas to the suggestion list.

Notice it may take some time before the article will appear as I am busy working on some other projects as well.


Where to Next?

Wonder where to go next? You can post a comment on this article.

Doc ID 468
Full URL https://imar.spaanjaars.com/468/wanted-input-for-the-next-version-of-my-n-layer-architecture-articles
Short cut https://imar.spaanjaars.com/468/
Written by Imar Spaanjaars
Date Posted 09/06/2008 21:33

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