Generating Windows or Smart Device Applications

The Composite UI Application Block (CAB) helps you build complex user interface applications that run in Windows. It provides an architecture and implementation that assists with building applications by using the common patterns found in line-of-business client applications. The current version of the Composite UI Application Block is aimed at Windows Forms applications that run with the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0.

PowerDesigner supports development for Windows and Smart Device application development through extension files for your C# v2.0 or Visual Basic 2005 OOM.

You can quickly build Windows and Smart Device applications without writing repetitive code, by using PowerDesigner to generate persistent classes, DAL, BLL and UI files based on CAB according to your NHibernate or ADO.NET persistent framework.

To enable the Windows or Smart Device extensions in your model, select Model > Extensions, click the Import tool, select the Windows Application orSmart Device Application file on the User Interface tab), and click OK to attach it.

Using this Windows application, you can test persistent objects with your own data. You can also improve the generated files and change the layout as you like in Visual Studio.

• Specifying an Image Library
  Your forms will probably use some images as icons. PowerDesigner provides a default image library, which it uses by default for Windows applications. You can also specify your own image library.
• Controlling the Data Grid View
  You can specify the length of your ADO.NET CF datagrid views.
• Defining Attributes Display Options
  You can define attribute-level options for presentation style.
• Defining Attribute Validation Rules and Default Values
  PowerDesigner provides validation and default values for the edit boxes in the Create, Find, ListView, and DetailView forms.
• Generating Code for a Windows Application
  Before generating code for Windows Application, you need to install CAB (available from http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnpag2/html/cab.asp). Check for the following required files in your installation directory:
• Generating Code for a Smart Device Application
  PowerDesigner can generate code for smart device applications.