It's been a while since I have blogged on anything S#arp Architecture (S#) related. I've been quite busy as of late, but still work with S# everyday and am very much commited to this project. 

Leadership Change

Geoffrey Smith has done a great job to date and is a valuable member of the S# team. He has recently changed jobs and no longer has the he would like to the project. So who will be taking the reins now, me. This project is very dear to my heart and something I would like to see continue on for as long as it is relevant. 

Project Status

This project is very much still alive and kicking. There are a lot of new things going on not only in the .NET world, but outside of it as well. MVC 4, HTML5, CSS3, NodeJS, Javascript Web Applications (think GMail) just to name a few. There has also been some updates to some of the 3rd party dependencies; NHibernate, Castle, MvcContrib, and others.

We are taking the next few weeks to internally discuss what we would like to propose as a road map to the our community. This planning will include information on when 2.0 will be a full release in addition to new features, changes to existing features, and new samples.

Now that we have published our 2.0 road map, several people have asked us how are we going to get there. Simple, one step at a time.

One step at a time

We have previously blogged about Templify (here and here) being the way we are going to deliver a S#arp Architecture solution. That was step one for us, so you could say that we are already starting to deliver 2.0. Our next steps will be as follows (subject to change)

1. Create an initial 2.0 release that includes (v1.7.X)
   1. Convert solution and projects to Visual Studio 2010
   2. Convert all projects to .NET 4.0
   3. Reorganize the solution structure for the solution template (moving to a Who Can Help Me based folder structure)
   4. Solution to use new MSBUILD based build system
   5. Package for Templify
   6. Document new Build process
   7. Add documents for Templify
2. Create next release that includes (v1.8.X)
   
   1. LINQ Specifications
   2. Component composition
   3. Component registration
   4. Isolate NHibernate
3. Create the next release (v1.8.5.X)
   
   1. Support for Castle 2.5
   2. Support for NH 3.0 (whether it is a GA release or not)
   3. Fluent NHiberate compiled against NH 3.0
   4. Support for MVC 3
   5. Change Validation (Data Annotations for UI, NHibernate.Validator for Model)
4. Create the next release (v1.9.X)
   1. Convert Default Package to use Spark as its default view engine
   2. Add documentation (blogs and wiki) on how to properly setup the Spark environment
   3. Include the new Plugin architecture
   4. Add documentation (blogs and wiki) on the new Plugin architecture
   5. Support for NoRM / MongoDb
   6. Support for Azure
5. Create the 2.0 release (v2.0.X)
   1. Final bug fixes
   2. Update all documentation
   3. Add samples via Blog posts
   4. Update Northwind
   5. Update Who Can Help Me
   6. Start creation of 3rd sample

All of this is subject to change based on the needs of the community / the team.

Conclusion

As you can see, we have an ambitious schedule a head of us. The team and I are really excited about what we have planned and cannot wait to share it with everyone. Some of it is very exciting, like the Plugin architecture and alternate data store support.

S#arp Architecture 1.6.5 will be the last stable release until 2.0 is released. The interim releases will all be listed as Alphas or Betas and should only be used in production if YOU are comfortable with it. If you are not or need to wait for a stable release, please wait for 2.0. For each release, we will also provide another Templify package. If you want the full source, you can download it from GitHub.

The gang and I thought that it would be very fitting to make the first post on the blog the road map. We hope that this road map will be a conversation starter in the group. We also hope this will give a clearer picture to the end users as to the direction the project is going.

S#arp Architecture 2.0

This release is going to be HUGE! Before we lay out the road map, I want to point out that with the 2.0 release, we have changed our mission statement from "Architectural foundation for building maintainable web applications with ASP.NET MVC" to "Architectural foundation for building maintainable applications". While this seems like a small change, we think it is significant. What does this mean to you, the end user? It means we are going to focus on where we think S# really shines, the service (tasks) layer and below. It also means we are going to have better sample applications that showcase using S# in many different types of applications. While we are going to keep Northwind and Who Can Help Me, we are going to add a third sample, one that is more of a real world sample. More on that later.

GitHub changes

Since GitHub now supports organizations, we've created an organization for S#arp Architecture and moved all the code to it. You can find the new repositories here. One of the first things you will notice is that there are more repositories. The repositories consist of:

• Sharp-Architecture-Build - Our new common build system for the project
• Who-Can-Help-Me - The Who Can Help Me sample application
• Sharp-Architecture - The source code for S#arp Architecture
• Northwind - The Northwind sample application
• SharpArch.Futures - Common items we find ourselves adding to our projects
• Sharp-Architecture-Contrib - The contrib project

From now on, all code changes will be done against these repositories. All issues should be logged here as well. We will keep the old issues at the Codai repository, but new ones should go here. 

Road Map

This is our loose list of items on the 2.0 road map. This list is not set in stone, but we are pretty sure it has everything we want / need.

• New build system based on MSBuild
• New packaging / deployment system
• Upgraded dependencies
  • NHibernate 3.0
  • Fluent NHibernate 1.1
  • Castle 2.5
• Spark as default view engine
• Norm / MongoDB support
• Azure support
• Change validation
  • Data Annotations for UI
  • Nhibernate.Validator for Model
• BDD specification tests using Machine.Specifications
• Linq Repository + Linq Specifications ala Who Can Help Me
• Introduction of a Command pattern
• Use of MEF to even more loosely couple the layers
• Create a better plugin architecture
• Better documentation
• Upgrade Northwind
• Upgrade Who Can Help Me
• Create third sample application
  • Multiple Front ends
    • MS MVC with Spark
    • Silverlight with Caliburn.Micro
    • OpenRasta
  • Based on a real world example
  • Increased complexity over Who Can Help Me

S#arp Architecture 2.0 will not be backwards compatible with previous versions, nor will there be an official upgrade path. There will simply be too many changes that could cause problems for us to support. Sorry, but we do feel it is for the betterment of the community as a whole. If members of the community want to step up and provide documentation for an upgrade procedure, we would not be opposed to this.

That is all for now, but please expect more soon.