Hello,

  We are using NetAdvantage for .NET+WPF 2007 Vol 3, the question that keeps coming up and I am looking for documentation on, is: Does NetAdvantage need to load, JavaScript or ActiveX controls to the client?

Can you point me in the right direction?

well, one of the features you seem to be most excited about (app styling) was not in the last 3 updates but about 5 updates ago. Personally I feel things like dialog window and image viewer are very minor additions since they are readily available without having them in my netadvantage toolkit.

Overall the last 4 releases have left me unimpressed.

ASP.NET 2008 Vol. 2
-WebSlider (don't care about it)
-WebHierarchicalDataSource (don't even understand it yet)
-add one new chart type to existing charts (I generally feel a new chart type is way too minor to be touted as a new feature)

ASP.NET 2008 Vol. 1
-Aikido Framework with three new controls (only three? no grid? and no Aikido in latest release? is this really coming?)

ASP.NET 2007 Vol. 3
-export features (kinda cool but not strong enough to be the basis for a new release)
-enhancements to existing controls (ho hum)

ASP.NET 2007 Vol. 2
-SEO (I don't believe anything you have added to the controls will replace or significantly reduce my custom SEO efforts)
-official release of gauges that were released previously (kind of a letdown that they were used as a major feature of two releases! plus once I tried to use them I realized they produce static images without any sort of animation-gauges should move!- and are difficult to set up and generally not worth the trouble IMHO)
-enhancements to existing controls (again, ho hum)

maybe my expectations are too high. that is possible. the primary reason we purchased the netadvantage components when we did was because at the time you appeared to have the best scheduler component out there. however once we started using it we quickly realized that some of the features available in the Winform version were not in the web version. and key things became deal-breakers for us. for example, you can drag an appointment from one time to another time within a day but you cannot drag to a different day. both we and our customers are puzzled by this limitation.

when I have asked about the web scheduler I was told you are going to continue to improve it but I have no idea if and when that will ever happen. it has not happened during my 1.5 years of subscriptions! and as far as I can tell you do not publish a roadmap for the product lines so we never know whether something is going to be fixed or not. my impression is you created it and then abandoned it to work on other components. and now one of your main competitors has a really superior scheduler that we are evaluating.

your competitor also appears to be way ahead when it comes to their native Ajax support. your Aikido Framework seems to have stalled while they have already released a completely new framework.

I apologize if I sound too negative. I admit to being a bit frustrated. It is not my intent to disparage your components as you clearly have some big fans (Chris!) but at this point we are planning to switch to another component vendor when our subscription expires. I need a solid scheduler component and don't know if you are ever going to update yours. fortunately (for me at least) I can get one right now that will do what I need.

JohnBobby,

I really appreciate you taking the time to spell that out for me.  I'm not going to try and sway your opinion one way or another, but I do feel compelled to comment on a couple of the items. 

Aikido is a brand new asp.net framework, built on top of Microsoft's ASP.NET AJAX extensions.  All new controls built by Infragistics are built on top of this framework.  Aikido was the code name used before we released the new controls built ontop of this framework.. it was an easy way to talk about it "vNext"  The WebSlider, along with any new web controls are being built on top of this new framework.  The new Aikido version of a Grid is expected in the 8.3 release, and there's a TreeView replacement on its way as well.  These controls are available as CTPs currently.

Infragistics has been doing AJAX development since 2004.  We called it "LoadOnDemand XML" back then.  The Infragistics controls use "embedded ajax", meaning you don't have to do anything other than set a property on the control to make it work.  There's no need to wrap a grid in an UpdatePanel or use any type of AJAX Manager, because the grid is smart enough to communicate with the server on its own.  This makes a big difference in network bandwidth.  The updatepanel (or any external AJAX panel) is easy to use, but not easy on your bandwidth.  From my viewpoint, we've pushed AJAX into just about every place it made sense.  So if you have areas where you feel we can be doing more, I'd love to hear them.  While other vendors may be pushing their "new" AJAX frameworks, be cautious of what ammounts to nothing more than a marketing campaign.  We've gone back to the drawing board and re-architected webcontrols from the ground up.  We've taken 7+ years of ASP.NET control development experience and lessons and applied them to create what I strongly believe is the best component framework out there. 

As for development on WebSchedule,we have done a good deal of work on these components, but a large portion of the work done has been more broad based framework enhancements.  We added AJAX support directly to the controls, and recurring appointments last year, and in the 2008.2 release, we added Safari support.  There have been other optomizations, but most importantly to you, we have not added any additional drag and drop support.  I can't guarantee that drag and drop support is coming in 2008 volume 1, but I will certainly push this feature request with the product manager.  One thing that may make this more likely is that the development team has just finised work on an overall drag and drop framework.  I don't think it will take very long to extend this out to webschedule. Again, I'll speak with the PM about this.

All in all, I would hope that you can agree that there was quite a bit of value in each of the releases, but no matter how many additoinal features were added, it wasn't going to help you fill in the missing scheduling feature that you needed.  I can certainly undrstand that.  Unfortunately for all of us, every release we're faced with the same difficult task of choosing which features will go in, and which will get cut from the list.  And inevitably, with each release there's going to be a disapointed customer whose feature didn't make it in. Heck, it took until Visual Studio 2008 for all of us to finally get some sort of JavaScript intellisense beyond "window" :)

We generally don't talk about roadmaps, and it's not because we want to keep you guessing.  The truth is that in order to produce 3 volume releases a year, it takes a very agile process.  A process where a total feature set may not be finalized until a month before the product ships.  In my opinion, there's nothing worse than making a promise and not delivering on it.  We have been sharing more of a vision of our roadmap lately, to help customers understand where we're going (Aikido framework, and CTPs), and hopefully that has been helpful. 

Thanks for taking the time to discuss this with me - I really do appreciate it.  I'll be in touch after I speak to the Product Manager with regards to your feature request.  Please feel free to contact me directly if you wish.  There sould be an email link in my profile.  And that hat invitation goes out to everyone else reading as well. I hesitate to put my email address in here because of spam, but I'll give you a hint it's my first name, last initial @infragistics.com

@tony

 thanks for your balanced reply. my thoughts are below.

"Aikido is a brand new asp.net framework, built on top of Microsoft's ASP.NET AJAX extensions.  All new controls built by Infragistics are built on top of this framework."

seems like it will take a very long time for all controls to be rewritten under this new framework if you are only releasing 3 or so each time!

"Infragistics has been doing AJAX development since 2004"

and kudos to you but you have acknowledged that your controls need to be rewritten (hence, Aikido) and that is what I hear often here in the forums, that your controls do the job but are heavy weight.

"While other vendors may be pushing their "new" AJAX frameworks, be cautious of what ammounts to nothing more than a marketing campaign"

1) I have no way to know if what you say here is true and 2) I don't know specifically which "other vendor" you are referring to (please be specific if you can back up the claim as it would be helpful to me and others)

"in the 2008.2 release, we added Safari support"

no disrespect but with a 2% market share we have much greater concerns than Safari support!

"I can't guarantee that drag and drop support is coming in 2008 volume 1"

I don't understand this comment as 2008 volume 1 was released some time ago and in fact 2008 volume 2 was just released! maybe you meant 2008? assuming so, to me this indicates you've abandoned this component at least in terms of enhancing its functionality. I appreciate you talking to the PM; tell him/her that if they are serious about the scheduler component they should look at the competition and see that they are now behind the state of the art.

"I would hope that you can agree that there was quite a bit of value in each of the releases"

actually I do not agree. and I am williing to admit this could be my own problem. but I have been and remain disappointed with each release of late. I eagerly look forward to a new release and then when I read the news it seems maybe there are one or two new features, and then something minor like a new chart is listed as a major new feature and enhancements (bug fixes?) to existing components listed as new features. from a marketing perspective, some of your recent releases IMHO should not even have a front-page splash/announcement rather just a page of release notes. it feels like over-promising and under-delivering to me. but again, maybe I am totally off-base here and I'm just feeling this way because my specific needs have not been met.

"We generally don't talk about roadmaps"

I understand the issues you discuss here but it would still be useful to know whether a component is slated for improvement within the next few releases. seems like you could just decide internally "yes" or "no" on something like that looking down the road for a year. not to sound like a broken record but it seems to me that the scheduler component was created and released to great fanfare and then shelved.

I really do appreciate your comments and I hope I don't sound too negative. our subscription goes through the end of the year so I'll be curious to see what the last release of 2008 brings.

I have been using Infragistics products for the past 10 years...Sheridan Data Widgets.  None of their customers pushes these guys harded than I do!  Very simply, nearly all of my development is tied to using the Infragistics toolset.  I can literally say I have zero experience with the MS Grid that ships with VS2008.

One of the things I learned a long time ago about database development for windows and web is that the presentation layer is just that: THE PRESENTATION LAYER.  Any effort to use it to massage and manipulate the data has performance consequences.

THE DB SERVER IS YOUR FRIEND

Get the data you need from your server EXACTLY the way you want the data presented.  Yes it takes more time to write the stored procs, but you should also see a performance gain.

Web Hierachical Data Source

I have been waiting for this control for a while.  It eliminates the need to manually create your heirachical grid.  Instead you create multiple sqldatasources and the WHDS manages the relationships for the WebGrid.  It has great potential! :) . 

I want to see it at the centerpiece of ALL the Infragistics hierachical controls Trees, Menus, Calendars etc.  It works fabulously with the Trees, Menus.  Me thinks it should eventually replace the "custom datasource" used for the calendar.  That way the calendar "data" can be easier to customize.

WebDialogWindow

I use this on EVERY MASTERPAGE!  Being able to provide a modal dialog with a few lines of code is something every developer needs.  Now I need it to provide standard Alert dialogs that can replace the MS validation alert boxes.

"Every conquest brings a newer quest!"  ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Can stored procedures (pl/sql) be used  for hierarchical data sources? Could you point me to any examples? 

thanks in advance!

GS