Hi Rick,

Thank you for detailed explanation.

>Rocky's book is an excellent book about architecture and it's a good read even if you don't expect to use CSLA. I've read both his 1.x and 2.x book and I was never planning on using CSLA, but the books is one of the best on business object design out there.
>
>CSLA is a great architecture but unlike some of the other tools mentioned here it's pretty bare bones. It does the business object part for the most part but not much in the way of the application level stuff like security, localization, data management etc.
>
>All frameworks have tradeoffs. I've used CSLA with a few clients and it's a great framework if you have a fairly solid grounding in .NET. I don't think it's a great framework for getting started because it leaves a lot of work to be done by the developer.
>
>I've also used (and have been involved in some of the devloepmnet) of Mere Mortals .NET and it's a more full featured framework in the sense that we're used to in the VFP space. It has the base business layer plus many application level services. It's very well thought out and based on solid design principles IMHO, but it can be somewhat complex when getting started.
>
>
>Another thing you might want to consider too is looking into an Entity Generator tool like nHibernate, WilsonOR or LLBLGenPro. These tools provide easy CRUD data access and object based data abstraction which is 80%+ of where the effort is in application development. Often times these tools are less intrusive but simplify the key data access tasks letting you stick with the raw .NET code.
>
>Ultimately, if you plan on using a framework you'll have to try them out. I wouldn't put too much faith into what anybody tells you - you'll have to try things out and see for your self since frameworks are a very personal thing. What one person likes completely pis-ses off another.
>
>I've never been a fan of frameworks in general and I tend to build my own, but I realize not everybody has the luxury or time to go that route <s>...
>
>Good luck, ultimately
>Aloha,
>
>+++ Rick ---