The current implementation of the Data Services Wizard creates 5 WCF CRUD methods / Operation Contracts per entity for object manipulation. For example a db table of <Country> would translate too:
1. CreateCountry(DataModel.Country Country)
2. ReadCountries(int stratIndex, int count)
3. ReadCountry(string entityId)
4. UpdateCountry(string entityId, DataModel.Country Country)
5. DeleteCountry(string entityId)
That's all fine and dandy and works which is great but it doesn't allow users to harness the true power of OA with making use of the Object Container and serializable change sets. (ObjectContainer.ChangeSet) I'd love to see the next revision include the option to auto generate the methods as they are plus the inclusion of new methods \ operational contacts that make use of changesets and a proxy object that takes care of translating objects back into an ObjectContainer on the Presentation Layer.
On another note I haven't been using Telerik ORM for all that long but one thing I've notice is you guys have no problem sticking together little examples on how to get functionality to work, but you guys are lacking a comprehensive spot for all this content and what Telerik recommends as best practices. I've gone through the process of trying to figure out how this stuff all works together, it's a mess!!!
I'll give you an example: do a search on the Telerik site or any documentation you guys have publicly available and tell me what you find for things like: ObjectContainerProviderProxy <-- Ya most people reading this are like what the heck is that! :) Then once you find that let me know where in the documentation it says that the ObjectContainerService is only intended for the old school DataServices and not for use with WCF, RIA, etc... Basically my point is there's a ton of functionality currently built into Telerik that the vast majority can't even make use of cause there's no documentation explaining what it does. I've also found the API documentation for the ORM to be virtually useless, come on people referring to documentation are looking for examples, not just what parameters to pass in.
I've gone through the vast majority of post on the forum that relate to WCF's, basically the answer from Telerik to any questions related to this topic have been a link to the Northwind WCF example, that's nice but it still doesn't explain why things are put together in such a way, the only thing in the knowledgebase related to it is how to modify the db so that the example works. Maybe the person that put that example together could also make a blog post about, what each project does, why that approach is best, maybe an alternative approach using changesets only on the backend only for proper separation of layers, what would Telerik recommend doing for that case?
Maybe for Q1 / Q2 you guys should put a little development effort aside and focus on documentation. Just a thought... So far my experience with Telerik products has been great, I want to keep it that way, don't take my feedback as negatives but rather just constructive feedback.
Cheers,
Dave P.
2 Answers, 1 is accepted
Your feedback about our product is such a great thing and we appreciate it, we are always taking our customers' requests as a first priority.
We added a work item about the requested functionality for the ChangeSets in our product backlog system. Regarding the documentation, we already started making new videos for the next release which will describe the details of how everything is going, and you will be able to find them under the Related Resources of the tool. We will add detailed documentation for the DSW for the next releases as well.
Regards,
the Telerik team
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Rank 1
Good to know Telerik's paying attention :)