The OpenAccess SDK

The Samples tab

The samples tab is where the SDK starts to shine. Here you have a list of the available examples you can browse. Of course you can easily filter them by tag, language and complexity in order to find the one you are looking for. You can also hide the navigation with the Hide navigation command.

Once you select an example its overview is rendered in the bottom compartment where you can find out what it is about. You can find a quick description, a list of goals for the example, a requirements list, some simple yes and no characteristics, a list of resources that are related and the history of the example. (You can also click View in Browser which will open the overview in your browser).

You can basically do 3 things with an example, you can either run it, open it or reset it. Lets start with the Open sample folder command, which will copy the example source code from the program files folder to a cache folder and open it for browsing. The Reset sample command will, as you might have already guessed, recreate the sample’s  cache folder. (You can change the cache folder using the Sample cache settings command in the middle of the screen).

And while the Run sample commands seems pretty simple it is actually quite complicated. First of all if the example is not in cache folder this command will make sure it is copied. Afterwards you will most probably see this popup window.

As you are looking at OpenAccess examples all of them need a certain database installed. The SDK will try and figure out if the database that the example needs is already there and if not will give you the option to install it automatically. Pretty neat.

The next step would be for the SDK to update the references and connection strings of the example, then compile it from the cache folder, run any neccessary services and finally start the application. All of this in a single click.

Finally the Open in Visual Studio command will do the same as the Run sample command except instead of running the example it will open it for edit.

Please note that some of these commands might be disabled if your setup does not meet the requirements of the example.

The Community tab

Here you can find side by side the two inner tabs the Rss Feeds and the Resources. The first one is a list of blogs in our community that is aggregated and you can read and  the latter contains links to the OpenAccess product site.

What’s next?

What we will be working on now is providing aditional examples that will implement the OpenAccess Sofia Car Rental application using different technologies including ASP.NET MVC, regular ASP.NET and WinForms as well as some improvements to the OpenAccess SDK that for the time being will be kept a secret.

As always we wil be working on improving the experience for you so any input you might have on the matter will be most appriciated.