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Ian Griffiths
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1 year ago
in Alt.NET Podcast Episode 2: Alt.NET and Microsoft on Alt.NET Podcast
I'm genuinely perplexed as to where everyone in this podcast got the idea that WPF is yet another example of the 'forms over data' model.
Heck, one of the most frequently vocalised complaints about WPF is that it's missing all of that cruft. (Which, incidentally, is one of the reasons I'm a big fan of WPF. It moves decisively away from that constraining mindset.)
I guess it would be easy to be misled by the fact that one of the most important aspects of WPF is its data binding system - any non-trivial WPF application makes pretty heavy use of that system. And if you'd never actually taken a look at it, I suppose you could, in ignorance, draw a plausible-sounding conclusion that it's just more of the same.
But data binding in WPF has absolutely no idea what a relational database is. There is no assumption that you necessarily even have a database - it just doesn't figure in the API.
Data binding in WPF is all about the objects. If you want to use WPF to build a form over your data, you've got to get that data into some objects first!
(And yes, since WPF will happily talk to any old object, that means it's possible to bind to a dataset. So if you absolutely want to keep a relational model right up close to your UI, WPF won't stop you. But equally it does nothing to encourage it - the only reason it's able to talk to dataset is because dataset's an object too, and WPF will bind to any old object model.)
Heck, one of the most frequently vocalised complaints about WPF is that it's missing all of that cruft. (Which, incidentally, is one of the reasons I'm a big fan of WPF. It moves decisively away from that constraining mindset.)
I guess it would be easy to be misled by the fact that one of the most important aspects of WPF is its data binding system - any non-trivial WPF application makes pretty heavy use of that system. And if you'd never actually taken a look at it, I suppose you could, in ignorance, draw a plausible-sounding conclusion that it's just more of the same.
But data binding in WPF has absolutely no idea what a relational database is. There is no assumption that you necessarily even have a database - it just doesn't figure in the API.
Data binding in WPF is all about the objects. If you want to use WPF to build a form over your data, you've got to get that data into some objects first!
(And yes, since WPF will happily talk to any old object, that means it's possible to bind to a dataset. So if you absolutely want to keep a relational model right up close to your UI, WPF won't stop you. But equally it does nothing to encourage it - the only reason it's able to talk to dataset is because dataset's an object too, and WPF will bind to any old object model.)
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That said, I have seen sample applications that sure do look like forms over data. So it certainly seems possible to build them in WPF, whether they are using datasets or objects.