I have not played with the WebSchedule components, but have written an app a couple of years ago using WinSchedule. I have the idea from reading the docs and forum posts that the database schemas for storing calendar data are different between the two, but I also noted that WebSchedule provides a "generic" datasource to allow you to source the data from custom data sources.
My questions are:
1. Am I correct that you can't use the same data schema for both WebSchedule and WinSchedule controls?
2. Assuming that #1 is true, has anyone tried writing a custom data source for WebSchedule using WinSchedule data?
(I am looking at the possibility of having both a web client and a win client, and would love to be able to use the same data fairly easily)
Thanks in advance.
Blair
behadfield said: 1. Am I correct that you can't use the same data schema for both WebSchedule and WinSchedule controls?
WebSchedule persists its data as entities (tables, objects) and attributes (columns, properties) whereas WinSchedule persists its data as a blob using .NET object serialization/deserialization, so the representations are different.
They have the same activities, appointments, recurrences, resources (Web)/owners (Win), each having basically the same properties, but because they are stored differently you won't be able to access each easily.
behadfield said: 2. Assuming that #1 is true, has anyone tried writing a custom data source for WebSchedule using WinSchedule data? (I am looking at the possibility of having both a web client and a win client, and would love to be able to use the same data fairly easily)
This is a little easier on Windows Forms where you can load an instance of WebScheduleInfo and a data provider to read-in the WebSchedule objects; you can then create/initialize the corresponding WinSchedule objects with methods that perform a memberwise copy property-by-property.
Equally on ASP.NET where you could load instances of WinCalendarInfo and WinCalendarLook, to deserialize a blob into WinSchedule objects; you can then create/initialize the corresponding WebSchedule objects. The only thing is this introduces a dependency on Windows Forms assemblies that you usually wouldn't want to deploy on a Web server.
Once you load a WebSchedule Appointment object, it should be straightforward to produce a WinSchedule Appointment object, and vice versa. So you can load either WebSchedule or WinSchedule and use it as a bridge to facilitate translating the objects to what the other platform expects.