A First Look at AST.NET V2 (BENUG Session): a relief (PMD Pattern & DataSources)!

Today I attended a BENUG session about ASP.NET V2 by Michiel van Otegem. Michiel put a lot of topics into his presentation and demos, so the a lot of cool stuff was briefly explained and showed. I was amazed how much new functionality was already available in this alpha release. My intrested went especially to the part when databinding comes into play. One demo showed how easy it was to drop a SQL Server table on a WebForm to create an editable grid. That's cool for a demo, but this is quite ugly for a production application: no layers, direct db access from the UI, ... Luckily there are several DataSources that can be used to do databinding, including a DataSource for Webservices and Objects. Even if they were not available it wouldn't be a problem because Whidbey used the Provider Model Design Pattern, so there is an IDataSource (don't remember the exact name) interface. You can create your own DataSource class by implementing this interface. Great!

Michiel also mentioned he expected Whidbey to go into beta phase around next summer (TechEd), he even made prediction for the RTM: end of 2004. BUT today I received the Whidbey DVD and at this point the installation is complete. So the magical moment happens once again: the first run of Visual Studio.NET Whidbey! It will be a long night... isn't the life of a developer great? :-)

UPDATE: I played a little bit with Whidbey and here is my first concern: there is no DataSource or similar class in WindowsForms... Maybe I overlooked it (it's already late), but as far as I can see, there are the plain “old” data classes. Are the WindowsForms developers left alone? Anyone an idea?