The patterns&practices team at Microsoft has released the latest version of its composite application guidance called PRISM 4 Drop 9, the library, the reference implementations and quick starts being code complete.
PRISM (PResentation Integration SysteM), formerly known as Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight is a Microsoft patterns&practices project providing guidance for architects and developers to write complex front-end WPF and Silverlight applications, containing a reusable library, reference implementations, quick starts, labs, and documentation.
PRISM is built around a number of patterns:
- Composite User Interface patterns:
- Composite and Composite View
- Command
- Adapter
- Modularity patterns:
- Separated Interface and Plug In
- Service Locator
- Event Aggregator
- Façade
- Testability patterns:
- Inversion of Control
- Separated Presentation
Microsoft released two major versions this year: PRISM 2.2 supporting Visual Studio 2010 and Silverlight 4, and PRISM 4 CTP including among other features a Model-View-ViewModel Reference Implementation (MVVM RI), a Stock Trader Reference Implementation (Stock Trader RI), a MVVM Quick Start, and API documentation. There is no version #3 for PRISM, probably to be in line with .NET 4.0, Silverlight 4, etc..
The latest update, PRISM 4 Drop 9, comes with a number of changes, such as:
- The Prism License has changed to the Microsoft patterns & practices license. Please see http://compositewpf.codeplex.com/license for details. It is also included in EULA.txt in the root Prism folder.
- The Prism Library 4.0 code base, reference implementations, and QuickStarts are now code complete.
- Consolidated and simplified the ViewInjection and ViewDiscovery QuickStarts into a single QuickStart called UIComposition QuickStart.
- Bug fixes
- Finished converting the StockTraderRI to MEF and update for consistency with MVVM guidance.
PRISM is planned to support Windows Phone 7 development, but currently nothing is available yet.
The latest version of PRISM requires VS 2010, .NET Framework 4.0, and Silverlight 4.
Community comments
re: Code Complete
by Dave Rooney,
re: Code Complete
by Dave Rooney,
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It's funny... when I see the term "Code Complete", I immediately think that the product is now many months or even years away from actually shipping in its final form. The term indicates to me that the developers have been working in isolation of the testers, and have now thrown their work over the wall, thinking that it's working just fine.
I would like to be wrong.
Dave Rooney
Westboro Systems