Does anyone have any real-world experience of CSLA?

Question

The main web application of my company is crying out for a nifty set of libraries to make it in some way maintainable and scalable, and one of my colleagues has suggested CS

Answer 1

I'm new to CSLA but I understand the concepts and I already understand that it's not an ORM tool so quit beating that damn drum folks. There are features of CSLA I like but using them feels a bit like there is a magician behind the curtain. I guess if you don't mind not knowing about how it works then you can use the objects and they work fine.

There is a large learning curve for beginners and I think it would benefit greatly by having 5-15 min. videos like Microsoft has for learning the fundamentals. Or how about releasing a companion book with the code instead of getting the code released and taking months to get the book out? Just sayin Mr Lohtka... We started building our stuff before the book and I struggled the whole time. But like I said, I'm new to it.

We used CSLA. We made our objects fit their mold then used 10% of what the framework offered. Object level undo? Didn't use it. NTier flexibility? Didn't use it. We ended up writing enough business rule code that I thought the only thing we were getting out of CSLA was complexity. Some "long in the tooth" developers that know the framework used it as their hammer because they had a nail that needed hitting. CSLA was in their belt and my guess is a lot of proponents of the framework see things from that perspective too.

I guess our seasoned developers are happy because it all makes sense to them. I guess if your organization doesn't have newbie programmers and you guys get bored by writing efficient and simple POCO objects with well formed patterns, then go for it. Use CSLA.

Answer 2

We started using CSLA because we thought it would help with our model layer. Was sort of overkill and mostly all we use now is the SmartDate class, just because we're already linked to the library.

We thought the validation interface would really help us enforce business rules but it didn't work well with WCF and serialization (we're still stuck on version 2.0.3.0, so things might have changed).

Answer 3

I am using CSLA as the business object framework for a medium size project. The framework has come a long way from the VB6 days and offers an extraordinary amount of flexibility and "out of the box" functionality. CSLA's mobile smart objects makes UI development much easier. However, I agree with others it isn't the right tool for every situation. There is definitely some overhead involved, but also a lot of power. Personally, I am looking forward to using the CSLA Light with Silverlight.

Pros:

• Data technology agnostic¹
• Large install base and it's FREE!!
• Stable and Logical framework
• Data Access code can be in your objects or in a separate assembly
• Property and Object Validation and Authorization

Cons

• The code can be a lot to maintain²
• Probably need a code generator to use effectively
• Learning curve. The structure of CSLA objects are easy to grasp, but the caveats can create headaches.

I'm not sure about test driven design. I don't unit test or test driven design (shame on me), so I don't know if unit tests are different than TDD, but I know that the most recent version of the framework comes with unit tests.

¹ Good thing because data access technologies never stay the same for long.
² This has gotten better with recent versions of the framework.

Answer 4

We've been using CSLA now for over five years, and we think it works great for constructing business applications. Coupled with code generation you can create business objects in a relative short amount of time and focus your effort on the meat of the application.

Answer 5

John,

We have teams working in CSLA from 2 to 3.5 and have found it a great way to provide a consistant framework so all the developers are "doing it the same way". It is great that most of the low value code is generated and we know when we run unit tests they work out of the box for all the CRUD stuff. We find that our TDD really comes in with the refactoring we do to design, and CSLA doesn't prevent us from doing any of that.

Chris

Answer 6

CSLA is the best application framework that exists. Rocky LHotka is a very but very smart guy. He is writing the history of software development like Martin Fowler, David S Platt, but my favourites writers are Rod Stephens, Mathew mcDonalds Jeff Levinson thearon willis and Louis Davidson alias dr sql. :-) Pros: All design patterns are applied. Cons: Hard to learn, and few samples.