I have not been very good at keeping up with this blog, but the theme is the same. I started this blog with a simple theme of being able to sit down with my end users and quickly and easily diagram their requirements to produce a prototype as quickly as possible.
I started on a project I was calling Domain Builder as well as a few other side projects. But not until the last project at work did I think this had much traction any more.
We have began using a framework from DevExpress call the Application Framework (XAF). This is a complete windows and web UI framework wrapped around their Persistent Object (XPO) framework. If you have not had a chance to explore it, I suggest you do. If you are familiar with NHibernate, this has a similar ORM component to it, but the XAF makes the UI generation just as easy.
The major modification we made to it was to utilize Domain Specific Languages (DSL) to include a designer interface similar to the class diagram tool within Visual Studio. This allows us to quickly sit with the end users to model their application. Once we hit the save button, the business model classes are generated based upon the XPO/XAF attributes. We can then run the application for the first time and within a matter of minutes, have a working prototype.
From there, we use the power of XAF to complete the UI design. This framework has proven to be very flexible and powerful at the same time.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to send them my way.