Service Consumption

Architects and developers can quickly incorporate many of the proven practices and patterns of building composite smart client applications. These practices and patterns have been identified during the development of many smart client applications and their components. By using the software factory, architects and developers can focus their efforts on business opportunities and create smart client applications that effectively address the needs of their organizations.

The Smart Client Software Factory provides an integrated set of guidance that assists architects and developers create composite smart client applications. These applications have one or more of the following characteristics:

• They have a rich user interface that takes advantage of the power of the Microsoft Windows desktop.
• They connect to multiple back-end systems to exchange data with them.
• They present information coming from multiple and diverse sources through an integrated user interface, so the data looks like it came from one back-end system.
• They take advantage of local storage and processing resources to enable operation during periods of no network connectivity or intermittent network connectivity.
• They are easily deployed and configured.

The Mobile Client Software Factory provides integrated guidance to help architects and developers create line-of-business Windows Mobile applications that interact with back-end systems over networks such as WiFi and GPRS that might be intermittently available.

A mobile smart client line-of-business application has one or more of the following characteristics:

• It has a rich user interface that takes advantage of the power of the Windows Mobile device.
• It might use a gateway server and the most cost effective underlying network technology to connect to and exchange data with multiple back-end systems.
• It takes advantage of local caching and processing to enable operation during periods of no network connectivity or intermittent network connectivity.
• It is easily deployed and configured.
• It helps to keep local, potentially confidential information secure.

The Mobile Client Software Factory provides extensive guidance, including patterns, step-by-step instructions (How-to topics), sample application source code (reference implementation), reusable components (Application Blocks), a Guidance Automation Toolkit package that automates common mobile client development tasks in Visual Studio, and architecture documentation.

In addition, the Mobile Client Software Factory builds on and incorporates the following existing patterns & practices assets:

• Composite UI Application Block and Data Access Application Block ported into the .NET Compact Framework
• Guidance Automation Toolkit

Architects can use the Mobile Client Software Factory to create baseline architectures for their organizations. A baseline architecture is a starting point for implementing instances of similar applications —in this case, a mobile application —that includes the most critical mechanisms and shared elements common to those applications. Developers can use the baseline architecture to create mobile client applications in a predictable and agile way, using the Application Blocks and tools provided.

Architects and developers can use the Web Client Software Factory to quickly incorporate many of the proven practices and patterns of building Web client applications. These practices and patterns have been identified during the development of many Web client applications and their components.

By using the software factory, architects and developers can focus their efforts on business opportunities and create Web applications that effectively address the needs of their organizations.

The Web Client Software Factory provides an integrated set of guidance that assists architects and developers in creating composite Web applications and page flow client applications.

These applications have one or more of the following characteristics:

• They have complex page flows and workflows.
• They are developed by multiple collaborating development teams.
• They are composite applications that present information from multiple sources through an integrated user interface.
• They support XCopy deployment of independently developed modules.
• They support online business transaction processing Web sites.