As we all know Microsoft has a passion for drag and drop data binding. We also all know that the standard Microsoft demo is to build an “Enterprise” solution using the drag and drop data binding. While it is much more possible to do this with a strong application architecture, I’m still a skeptic. Perhaps I’ll start paying attention and see if Beth can convince me otherwise.

Okay, so we’re about 15 minutes in and Beth has already said “I’m an Architecture MVP, and I’m doing this drag and drop thinking ‘oo, this isn’t good’“. She then made the poin that the drag and drop development scenario is valid if you are creating smaller applications. Still not convinced, but I’m listening.

A good point was just made. For a WinForms app, all settings should be stored in the app.config file that belongs to the main executable’s project. Don’t have your connection string in an app.config file that is in your DAL assembly’s project.

The data source wizard will not let you multi-select when you are creating a new datasource. To do this you will need to use code gen, and reflection on the assembly, to create the XML file that is the datasource file.

Using object data binding you can architect your application to have distince Presentation, Business and DAL tiers.

The custom object databinding might be the thing that convinces me to do some databinding. I’m just not sure if I’ll drink the kool aid though.