Review: IdeaBlade-Lite

IdeaBlade-Lite RAD Framework for .NET, Free
IdeaBlade
Emeryville, California
(510) 596-5100
http://www.ideablade.com/IB-Lite_Home/

Many people have recognized that building routine business applications leads to lots of repetitive code: shoveling data back and forth from a database to a user interface, even with an underlying framework such as .NET, is an exercise in disciplined tedium. So it's not surprising that you find application frameworks built on top of the .NET Framework: sets of classes and automated tools that make the job of building such routine applications easier. What makes IdeaBlade stand out from some of the other entrants in the .NET application framework arena is the amount of work that it does and the polish of the tools that it delivers for free.

For starters, you get a nice little object-relational mapping (ORM) tool that operates as an add-in within Visual Studio .NET 2003 (all of IdeaBlade is tightly integrated with Visual Studio, and works with either C# or VB .NET). The tool supports a fair number of customizations to the mapping, such as easily setting class and property names to correspond to table and column names,  and is easy to learn how to use. You don't have a lot of control over the generated code; like the rest of the IdeaBlade framework, you're meant to treat the ORM as a black box, providing a new level of system services for your application, rather than as something to be tweaked and poked around inside of. After creating objects with this tool, you'll probably want to look at the UI Mapping tools, which let you go quickly from the business objects you've just created to a user interface. The logic for autocreating controls seems to work well, and there is a nice user interface to let you adjust data bindings, configuring things like control type and control name for each property you choose to display on a form. In addition to supporting the standard Windows Forms controls, IdeaBlade-Lite also works with suites from Developer Express and Infragistics.

IdeaBlade also comes with its own "object query" language, a simplified query dialect that runs at the business object level rather than the SQL level. This lets you do most or all of your data retrieving in your business layer, rather than worrying about writing endless SQL statements and stored procedures. There are lots of other things in the IdeaBlade suite as well, including support for disconnected user scenarios, automatic application updates, integration with Visual Studio deployment, and integration with Crystal Reports. The IdeaBlade-Lite package installs a boatload of samples and tutorials to help you understand this all, as well as extensive background documentation.

There are only a few rough edges and annoyances here. One of the ones that got me is that the ties with the third-party control suites are very version specific: the support for Developer Express, for example, looks for version 2.0.1 and wouldn't work with the 2.0.4 controls I had installed. The VB .NET tutorials appear to be translated from the C# tutorials, and there were a spot or two that the translators missed (and some of the tutorials are C# only). Finally, you need to be aware that not everything you see in the Concept Guide  is actually going to work in IdeaBlade-Lite. That's because this product is meant as an introduction to the full IdeaBlade product. IdeaBlade-Lite is a two-tier version of their full n-tier product, which includes the IdeaBlade Business Object Server (not in this package). You get a lot more in that package, but you'll also have to pay for it.For a free product, though, the Lite version has an awful lot to offer.

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Mike Gunderloy is the lead developer for Larkware and author of numerous books and articles on programming topics.