>>Out of curiosity, what kind of code are you writing in .NET, C# or VB, and which frontend are you using, ASP, WInforms, WPF, Silverlight?
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>The framework is one DLL which handles Web, Web Services and desktop applications. This is the core of each application which uses it. It is tied to a robust data dictionary which does some amazing things.
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>It is built in VB.NET but can be used from any .NET environment.
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>I do not use any proprietary .NET related components such as those you mentioned. The reason, simply by experience, I have learned that if you go too deep into something, it makes it difficult to migrate after. So, everything that most of those things do, I simply coded whatever was necessary to achieve the same. So, if in five years, I have to migrate the framework into a new environment, it'd be easier.
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>Front end is ASP.NET Web applications. I also have a lot of related Web Services going in and out. Each Web application is tied to a robot, which serves for the purpose of doing some common tasks for each application I have, as well as other custom task which is directly needed in the application itself.
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>Backend supported are SQL Server, VFP and by the use of the data provider, I can do OleDb, SQLClient, ODBC, which opens the door to other environment such as SQL Anywhere, for example.
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>So, in overall, I have been able to deliver, for example, a full blown Web site application being done overnight while others can take years. It just depend on the magnitude of the project. But, for the one having been done overnight, without the framework and its data dictonary, it would have taken months.
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>So, basically, when doing an ASP.NET .aspx form, neither of them have code behind. Neither of them have code in the .ASPX page but a call to a method of an object which does the rest. All specific custom code are in classes. So, if I have DataEntryMember.aspx, it will be tied to DataEntryMember.vb, which contains only a few property setups and some custom code, if needed. Otherwise, the framework does the rest, from the dictionary.
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>The framework supports English, French, Spanish and Portuguese interfaces.
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>Five years have been invested in it to make it to where it is today. I wouldn't do anything without it. Where I go, training, documentation, menthoring and related issues are applicable so those who use it will know the basics and be able to move from then on with it.
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>Right now, I am working on a big nationwide Web application, which is tied to a lot of products, Web Services and robots. There are a lot of challenges such as those recent threads about iTextSharp, as more and more, we receive the need to manipulate those PDF. So, when it comes to such a situation, I build a class for it in the framework, if not already there as I know this should be generic and way up high in the code hierarchy, thus in the framework. But, it is mature since the last 2 years and offers great response time performance, which you are able to notice by the use of this Web site.
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>Feel free to ask more information if needed. You probably have one on your own either custom or off the market.

What you are doing sounds really great, you are very practical in your approach which is also what we are trying to do. However we do still most of our work using our VFP framework, which has similar characteristics as your .NET framework, with the difference that we can create only desktop applications. We feel that the market demands more web applications, and therefore we also started on a MVVM framework in .NET and C#, but we are back and forward with thinking to use Silverlight as frontend, because of all the different opinions we are careful not to go onto the wrong train. Also our VFP framework is so mature that it is difficult for us to imagine to have a similar set of tools anytime soon in .NET, you are looking at a long timeframe.
You say you do mentoring, does that mean you are promoting your framework as commercial framework? I would be interested how your applications look like, and how you deal with the usual problems when moving a desktop application to the web, like asyncronous processing, reporting and deployment.