Acropolis, the future of Smart Client
For some time people have been asking us what our plans are for supporting WPF within SCSF / CAB. In our last release we shipped support for hosting WPF Smart parts and Workspaces within a windows SCSF / CAB application. The next question many of our customer's had is "Why didn't you ship a WPF version of SCSF?". Well this week at Tech-Ed, David Hill let the cat out of the bag, and it's name is a project code-named "Acropolis". I've put together a small FAQ below to help clarify some of the questions you might be having.
What is it?
Well Acropolis is a next generation platform for building the kinds of applications that you currently build with CAB. Make no mistake, Acropolis is not just another version of CAB. Acropolis takes the concepts of CAB to levels that folks in p&p might have never dreamed. With Acropolis you basically define your entire application in a very rich designer environment. Today you build smart parts which are basically user controls in a designer. You then manually wire up your parts to data and handle alot of the logic in code. Tomorrow you will build parts, behaviors, navigation, and even business logic (via Windows Workflow Foundation) all in a designer. You will even be able to wire components and dependencies and define how they interact via designers and without writing or generating any code. I am not saying you won't write any code, but Acropolis will significantly reduce the things that you will need to write code for. Also it will allow you to do things in XAML that today you can only do in code.
(See the screen shot below)
How is this possible?
Acropolis leverages XAML behind the scenes to store the application definition. This means rather than spitting tons of code, Acropolis writes out XML. Similar to WPF and Workflow, Acropolis then takes this definition at runtime and wires everything together to create your resulting application.
What happens to SCSF when Acropolis ships? Will p&p still support it?
With the announcement of Acropolis, we currently have no further plans for SCSF releases. That being said, our customers should rest assured that we are not dropping support for SCSF. We will continue to support the forums, provide fixes and assist customers in their implementations. Additionally the newly launched SCSFContrib project is an ongoing community effort to extend CAB/SCSF which will continue. We will continue to look at ways to help customers build smart client applications including providing pure WPF guidance as well as guidance for building Acropolis applications.
I have an existing SCSF / CAB applicaiton, will you help me migrate to Acropolis?
Another yes. We will be working with David Hill and the Acropolis team to create a migration path for existing CAB/SCSF customers. This will include looking at hosting existing CAB components in Acropolis as well as prescriptive guidance. We are committed to helping our customers make this transiton.
My company is planning to develop a smart client application. Should I use SCSF or wait for Acropolis?
Acropolis is not going to ship for some time. Depending on your constraints, building in CAB/SCSF may be your best bet. As we mentioned above, we will be providing a migration path so that investments in CAB/SCSF are not wasted.
What about the future of WCSF and the client program in general?
WCSF is not affected by the Acropolis announcement. We are currently starting off on our next release. We are also looking above and beyond WCSF at other areas where we can help customers solve their challenges. This includes AJAX, Silverlight, building RIAs (Rich Internet Applications), SharePoint, dynamic language support etc.
We're incredibly excited in p&p that our work in SCSF/CAB has been one of the catalysts for Acropolis. Our hat's are off to the fabulous work David Hill, Kathy Kam and the Acropolis team are doing. This is not the end but a new beginning!
More to come....
Comments
Anonymous
June 05, 2007
Endlich, auf diesen Moment warte ich nun schon seit September 2006 als ich mit der ersten Version vonAnonymous
June 05, 2007
Finally it's out - the successor of Smart Client Software Factory and Composite UI Application BlockAnonymous
June 05, 2007
No not the one in Athens, Greece but the one just announced by Microsoft. Apparently the Patterns andAnonymous
June 06, 2007
Glenn Block from the Patterns and Practices team (the guys who made CAB) blogged about some common askedAnonymous
June 06, 2007
Glenn Block just blogged about the relationship of Acropolis and CAB check it out. We have been askedAnonymous
June 06, 2007
Now that Acropolis is finally public, and David Hill has talked about it , we at patterns & practicesAnonymous
June 06, 2007
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June 06, 2007
Glenn Block's blog My Technobabble provides an overview of Acropolis , the future of Smart Clients .Anonymous
June 06, 2007
I was reading John Mullinax's blog . He has an interesting post on Popfly where he built a HLD DPE NewsReaderAnonymous
June 06, 2007
Acropolis: Yet Another Executable XMLAnonymous
June 06, 2007
Les applications fondées sur le modèle « SmartClient » combinent les avantages des applications de typeAnonymous
June 06, 2007
Well, after taking the red-eye from Seattle last night I made it to TechEd in time to get some reallyAnonymous
June 07, 2007
The comment has been removedAnonymous
June 07, 2007
For some time people have been asking us what our plans are for supporting WPF within SCSF / CAB. InAnonymous
June 07, 2007
I'm going to be confused. During the last three days we've seen: Acropolis : a set of tools to make itAnonymous
June 07, 2007
Hi Glenn, Will Acropolis be a formally supported product (similar to the evolution of Atlas into ASP.NET AJAX), or a guidance initiative? Will it include support for WinForms interoperability (i.e in addition to a CAB/SCSF migration path)? Cheers, MattAnonymous
June 08, 2007
No TechEd durante esta semana, foi anunciado o Acropolis. Acropolis será a próxima geração do CAB (CompositeAnonymous
June 08, 2007
It was on December 2006 when I first looked at this new framework on a developer lab at Redmond. I'mAnonymous
June 08, 2007
Page Flow WF sample Jon Flandr's-WCF and WF session at TechEd The Moth--.NET Framework 3.5 Glenn BlockAnonymous
June 08, 2007
@Matt - AFAIK Acropolis is planned to be a full fledged citizen of Visual Studio / .NET similar to AJAX, WPF, WF, etc. As to the WinForms interoperability, I am not sure what the current plans are. I will be meeting with the team next week and get solid answers for both.Anonymous
June 10, 2007
I traveled most of the week so did not blog ... from the blogs, I read here are some of my 'faves' forAnonymous
June 11, 2007
"Acropolis, the future of Smart Client" So sayeth Glenn Block, product lead for the Smart Client SoftwareAnonymous
June 11, 2007
I wanted to take a few moments to chat about a new technology that I'm very excited about. AcropolisAnonymous
June 11, 2007
It's look like the Programmers' Holy Grail is to create software without coding. I saw this movie before in the 90's with case tools. For me it's impossible.Anonymous
June 11, 2007
@Clyde I was probably a bit unclear with my announcement. Acropolis is not going to get rid of coding in general. We all know the history of case tools which relied heavily on code gen. What Acropolis does do though is allow using XAML markup rather than pure code for handling many redundancies encountered in smart client apps. Because it is markup it is more readily readable by tools and designers. At the end of the day though you can still go directly to the XAML, or write it in code. The tools will help in areas but will not be the end of all of solving all your problems for sure. When I say you'll do things in designers without writing code, that means "some" things not "all" things. I have updated the main post to clarify this. ThanksAnonymous
June 12, 2007
During TechEd Microsoft announced Acropolis , which is a new framework for building more modularizedAnonymous
June 13, 2007
The good thing about having too much work to do when I got back from TechEd is that by now other peopleAnonymous
June 13, 2007
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June 13, 2007
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June 20, 2007
Starting this week, I am going to round up all the Acropolis posts (both from the team and from our customers)Anonymous
June 21, 2007
WIll Acropolis Source Code be available?Anonymous
June 24, 2007
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June 27, 2007
Wow, it's MFC for .NET! Excellent! With some ASP.NET style code-behind classes thrown in. Seriously though gents, demos of over-engineered Notepad.exe's aside, are you going to support the infrastructure-style features which are so evident and so attractive in CAB? I think a lot of us could care less for code-behind and MFC AppWizards for the 21st century, but were really ready to transform our coding styles to embrace the CAB way of things. Maybe the masses aren't ready for it, and I can see Acropolis being more saleable to the mass audience, but CAB style technology really looks like the way forward.Anonymous
June 29, 2007
After many months, we can finally announce the public availibility of Acropolis! You can find the downloadAnonymous
August 07, 2007
Heres my take on smart client. Your doing smart client if: the application runs on the desktop the applicationAnonymous
August 15, 2007
A recent post to our XAF newsgroup is asking the following question: "How does this [XAF] differAnonymous
August 26, 2007
I recently saw a post from Brandon Satrom as he was asking for feedback on his interpretation of compositeAnonymous
August 26, 2007
I recently saw a post from Brandon Satrom as he was asking for feedback on his interpretation of compositeAnonymous
September 30, 2007
Glenn Block, PM in P&P team just announced on his blog that there won't be any future developmentAnonymous
October 15, 2007
The comment has been removedAnonymous
July 02, 2008
Before I go any further, we shipped! :-) Links: Composite Application Guidance Landing Page (will beAnonymous
July 02, 2008
Before I go any further, we shipped! :-) Links: Composite Application Guidance Landing Page (will beAnonymous
July 02, 2008
Before I go any further, we shipped! :-) Links: Composite Application Guidance Landing Page (will beAnonymous
March 31, 2009
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