CAB - Composite UI Application Block
Composite UI Application Block (CAB) is a guidance asset (an application block) based on .NET 2.0. It’s intended to provide proven practices to build complex UIs based on simpler “parts” (SmartParts as we call them, “WinParts” in other architectures).
Microsoft’s Patterns & Practices group released recently a first pre-release drop of the CAB named ‘Community Drop 1’ to demonstrate the direction in which the CAB is heading.
For those new to the CAB, or who have very recently
joined our user community, the Composite UI
Application Block (CAB) is designed to help you to
implement common smart client user interface (UI)
composition patterns, focusing on the business logic
required hiding the complexity of the underlying
infrastructure required to support it. It is
designed to support the development of smart client
line-of-business applications such as in the
following scenarios:
· Online transaction processing (OLTP) front-ends
· Integration (or portal) scenarios
· UI intensive information worker applications
The CAB is designed to separate the different parts
of software development, enabling each developer or
team to concentrate on their area of expertise. For
example the areas of business logic, infrastructure
components, and user interface components.
The CAB uses the concept of a shell application,
within which one or more
SmartParts
can interact.
SmartParts
are the minimum unit of management of a solution and
a solution is built from a collection of
collaborating
SmartParts
that ship inside plugins called
Modules. The shell application is simply a Windows Form
application that uses the Component Model to provide
services to the
SmartParts.
If you are interested to take a look at CAB join the CAB Got Dot Net workspace
More posts about CAB can be found on Eugeniop’s Weblog and on Edjez’s Weblog