The Tech Bit
The Able Framework enables developers to rapidly build a business logic layer that will interact directly with the data storage layer without the need for data access components or code.
At the core of the Able Framework are the Able Business Objects and Able Business Entities. These base components provide all the information functionality required of business components such as inserting, updating and deleting. This means that any business objects or entities derived from these components will inherit this functionality, freeing the developer from writing extensive and repetitive data access code. One of the key strengths of the Able Business Components are their flexibility, although the data is accessed through the framework via data access queries that are generated 'on the fly' these can be overridden using custom queries or stored procedures. This allows the developer to adopt the data strategy that best suits the scenario for which they are developing. Another key feature of the Able Business Components is the ability to easily create n-level parent child relationships to support complex hierarchical data structures. These complex relationships are also automatically supported by transactions to enforce data integrity.
In addition to the core business element of the Able Framework there are also common libraries that can act as building blocks for application development. These include a Content Management library, a Document Management library and a Controls library.
The Able Framework Development Kit includes a set of developer tools designed to vastly increase a developer's productivity. These tools include a Business Object and Entity generator; this allows the developer to navigate, via a GUI, to a database and select a table or tables from which to generate a business component in the required .NET language. In addition to the code generator there are a number of code snippets available for use when manually building or customizing business components. Other tools include a T-SQL query generator and Stored Procedure generator; these are designed to save time and provide accuracy when adopting custom data access strategy. The development kit includes help and support files which can be viewed in any of the Microsoft .NET languages.
The Able Framework is built upon the Microsoft .NET 2.0 framework and is initially focused on interacting with the Microsoft SQL database family. The Able Framework is not 'cast in stone' we are constantly adding new features to it in order to keep ahead of changes in technology. Some of the things we are currently looking at include the upcoming technologies from Microsoft such as LINQ (Language Integrated Query), WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) and WCF (Windows Communication Foundation).
The main focus of the Able Framework is to increase the efficiency and accuracy of developers by reducing the amount of code they need to produce and by creating a unified method for building business logic components that interact directly with the data storage layer.
