Spring.NET for Desktop application

[vim]

Hello all,

I have as such expereinced with J2EE world more then then .net world!-to begin with.

Recently,we have a requirment where we have to develop a small application that will reside on desktop machines. Its a normal desktop application requiring UI,validation,workflow/orchestration,screen-flow navigation etc. It needs to talk to server using custom protocol in addtion over http.

Now, i have few queries:
1. Can we use spring.net for such desktop application requirement?
2. Will it be too heavy,at runtime i mean,as i feel, spring.net is mainly for server side?
3. Does it support any UI-framework on top of its core container for desktop application to ease out the development? I mean Validator aspect/intercptor,screenflow management etc.??
4.If answers ,for all of the above questions is not ,then which are other opensource framework alternatives for desktop application on .NET platform.?

Thanks,in advance,

vim

[.ben]

1. Sure

2. We've only shipped two desktop application where we use spring, and the runtime load seems acceptable. I've not measured the times but the endusers do not complain about long waiting times; and when they do it's our fault :p.

The applications are deployed on a lot of different machines, from highend to lowend.

3. I do not believe so.

4. I only know of one other IoC/AoP/... framework and that's . Castle (http://www.castleproject.org)

[Aleks Seovic]

To expand on Ben's response, yes, you can use Spring.NET for Windows applications, and performance shouldn't be an issue at all -- Spring's overhead is insignificant when compared to all the remote calls to your server.

As for the additional goodies, we will start working on Windows app support once 1.1 final is out, but it probably won't be available before the end of the year. For now, you can leverage data validation framework and possibly data binding framework, but you will have to create the plumbing yourself.

Regards,

Aleks

[vim]

Thanks Ben and Aleks,for your inputs!
Spring rocks!

vim
:)

[cris]

vim, check out the Composite UI Application Block (http://www.gotdotnet.com/codegallery/codegallery.aspx?id=22f72167-af95-44ce-a6ca-f2eafbf2653c) which also has a DI framework called ObjectBuilder.