I'd like some advice on whether I should stay with webforms, or move onto kendo ui. I do web app development in a public hospital. I'm in the reporting area, rather than IT, but mainly I develop handy little data-centric apps where the main patient management system is too cumbersome and limited, or spreadsheets are too fiddly and error prone. There is almost always an element of looking up some data from our data warehouse (enter a number and get all the information we have about the patient, their hospital episodes etc), plus add extra data, such as: when did I try to contact this patient? what status will I assign to them on the waitlist now etc.
I have done all of this using a very simple approach using webforms, sql server, mainly sqldatasource for databinding, and either Telerik ajax or straight javascript/jquery. The whole MVC and Entity framework thing - yes I can see it has its advantages for more complex applications, but it all seems overkill for what I do.
However, when I look at Kendo UI, I am attracted by the simplicity and elegance of the code. I do sometimes get a bit of a mess with the combination of client-side and server side code, and try to deal with all sorts of events on what is often in effect a single page app.
This is what I'd LIKE to do, (but is it possible or advisable?):
1. Create apps that use only html, javascript/query and kendo UI
2. Keep the data binding really simple still - but perhaps move to something a bit more sophisticated like Dapper
3. Avoid MVC, Angular, React, entity framework etc etc that seem to require so much coding and abstraction, and sometimes get in the way
I suppose I'm more of a workplace problem solver and UI designer than a coder (as you may have picked up already) - my "customers" think what I do for them is great - of course they don't know that the bits they can't see are decidedly uncool and unhip.
Well, this has been a bit of a ramble, but if anyone could perhaps point out some good tutorials or a book that would be useful I'd be most appreciative.
2 Answers, 1 is accepted
Indeed, the Kendo UI Professional suite is easy to use, even for complex applications. Regarding the data manipulations, you can expose the data through Web Services and handle everything else on client-side.
To get familiar with the suite you can refer to our online demos, where you could see the code and even edit it in our dojo environment.
Following are some links from our documentation that you could refer:
- http://docs.telerik.com/kendo-ui/introduction#kendo-ui-professional
- http://docs.telerik.com/kendo-ui/intro/installation/getting-started
- http://docs.telerik.com/kendo-ui/intro/widget-basics/wrapper-element
- http://demos.telerik.com/kendo-ui/
Kind Regards,
Konstantin Dikov
Telerik by Progress
Rank 1
Iron
Thank you Konstantin. I have decided to use your MVC server version of Kendo, and I'm now having success with my move from WebForms by simplifying the learning - using Dapper and SQL rather than the more complex Entity Framework and LINQ. I've posted some more details here.