Asp.Net Development Strategy

[SteveT]

I work for a large company that has primarily used Oracle forms
against Oracle applications. As typical of large companies with a
smaller IT department, lots of developer cowboys have spawned over the
years to develop different solutions for their departments, including
Filemaker, MS Access, ColdFusion and old asp. Whenever the "cowboy"
leaves, the app gets tossed over the fence to IT. Within the last
couple of years, the Oracle factions have conceded some of their power
because of tightening budgets and increasing Oracle licensing costs.
They have allowed us to develop apps in asp.Net with MS SQL Server and
legacy Oracle backends. Which leads to my question. We have a .Net
developer group with varying degrees of .Net experience and
knowledge. As one of the most knowlegable, I've been asked to be the
technical lead for the group. I want to standardize our development
to allow cross-developer maintenance of projects and common code
formatting. I've been thinking of using one of the code generating
products like CodeSmith, StrataFrame, TierDeveloper, IronSpeed or
DevForce. It would seem to allow more consistent and rapid
development. I know these aren't cheap to buy, but we have a bunch of
apps to convert with lousy requirements defined and a crew of
diversely knowledgeable developers. I am interested in hearing your
opinions and experiences. Thanks.

Steve T.

 

[Steve C. Orr [MCSD, MVP, CSM, ASP Insider]]

I'm not a big fan of these kinds of cookie cutter solutions since
applications are rarely as standard as these programs like to pretend.
However, depending on your time and budget constraints they may be a
necessary evil.

Otherwise, I'd suggest you use this as an opportunity to give your
developers some real experience developing some real ASP.NET applications
from the ground up. In the long run your team will be better off for it.

--
I hope this helps,
Steve C. Orr,
MCSD, MVP, CSM, ASPInsider
http://SteveOrr.net
http://iPhonePlaza.net