What Code Generation tool are folks using now?

Hello,

I'm a developer over at CodeSmith Tools and we are currently implementing new CSLA 3.6.x templates. If any of you have any template suggestions or improvements that you would like to see please let me know.

Thanks
-Blake Niemyjski

I know that this particular thread is a few years old now, but I am posting this question here based on references which were made in this discussion.  A few years ago, I used the ComExpress software from ShoutSoft to build an application which we then sold to and deployed to production for a customer.  I had modified its templates to specifically support Oracle and its sql syntax as well as add additional functions, pages, etc... which could then be embedded automatically in the generated application.

The ShoutSoft package was able to generate a Complete application including : login/security,  primary page with navigation links, parent-child pages with full CRUD functionality, etc...

I had wanted to use any current version of the product to produce some other applications, but ShoutSoft seems to have completely and suddenly disappeared.

So, my questions are:

(1) Does anyone know what happened to ShoutSoft and if its software is available somewhere (including DbCodeXpress2008 or newer as discussed in this thread).

and/or

(2) Are there any other generator products available for CSLA which don't only build isolated table based objects, but also allow for the automation of complete application generation as the ShoutSoft product did?

Thanks!

Hello,

I've never heard of that company before ..  We just released a new version of the CSLA templates, but it is still dependent on the database out of the box. However, it is now provider based and we do have some other providers (NHibernate xml, EDMX) you can generate from... You would just need to hook them up to generate off of the other providers and handle the DAL. Please let me know if you need more info.

There are a few generators out there that will generate the full application.. But why would you want it to generate a complete UI? It's not going to be to your specifications / exact requirements. It's best to just create a set of templates to meet your UI standards.

I second Blake.

Hi Blake,

    That company, ShoutSoft, was discussed briefly earlier in this thread, but they did suddenly seem to disappear.  Your point and question on the generation of the entire application is certainly valid.  We had utilized the templates in that product, in fact, to specifically override certain functions and pages anyway.

    My real issue or concern is the fact that we did produce an entire application on the platform and spent a lot of time updating the templates to support Oracle as well as other functionality which we wanted to have, so one main problem is losing all of that investment in time and template code to start back at square one.

    On another note, I have actually licensed your product as well and have started exploring it, so hopefully we can end up standardizing on that as our development platform/approach going forward.

    Thanks,

        Chris

Hi Tiago,

 

    Thanks and you will see my reply to Blake which I just made as well.  I agree that Blake's comments make perfect sense too.   In terms of that other company and product (ShoutSoft), I was also simply curious about what exactly happened to that firm since it seemed to abruptly disappear after some number of years in business and product development.

     All the best,

        Chris

Hello,

I'd recommend starting out with the latest released version (4.0) of the templates. If you do make any modifications please post them on our forums / issue tracker as we would love your feedback and support other database providers..

From a business stand point, your previous work is a sunk cost and you shouldn't look at that going forward. 

Please let me know, what is the best tool to generate DAL layer in nHibernate while BO in CSLA?

So that server side DataPortal would use nHibernate for CRUD

 

Also please let me know why CSLA often stands in generators as a replacement or alternative for nHibernate or other ORMs while being a universal business layer rather than a DAL oriented thing?