Is CAB complex? And if so, Why?

CAB & SCSF, Hey what's going on?

.NET Geek — Sun, 27 May 2007 23:15:18 GMT

It's been a busy week in the CAB/SCSF corner of the blogoshpere. I guess it all started with Oren's post

re: Is CAB complex? And if so, Why?

Bil Simser — Mon, 28 May 2007 02:03:17 GMT

Any chance of opening up the source for the customer care framework application? It might help people see a "real" application using CAB and help drive better CAB adoption with real world examples rather than QuickStarts and samples.

re: Is CAB complex? And if so, Why?

Pieter — Mon, 28 May 2007 03:41:36 GMT

I love CAB, and yes it is more complex than a standard winforms app, but the learning curve is worth it. There is also a lot of info on the web today, which makes learning it so much easier. I learned CAB when there was almost no way to learn it other than looking at the quickstart samples, so all I will say to those whining abaout its complexity is to get stuck into it and when you get that aha moment you will understand just what CAB can mean for you when developing applications. My main attraction to it at the moment is the ease with which we can extend it and all the applications we support without doing major work on our code base. Well done P&P team. Keep it up.

On tools, CAB and EJB

Ayende @ Rahien — Mon, 28 May 2007 08:21:50 GMT

On tools, CAB and EJB

re: Is CAB complex? And if so, Why?

John Rusk — Mon, 28 May 2007 11:09:00 GMT

>All of our our product plans are reviewed by an advisory board comprised of industry professionals that are actually using Entlib, WSSF, WCSF and SCSF within their organizations

What about review by some people who are _not_ using it? Choosing reviewers from existing users will result in a somewhat "biased" sample. (Biased towards those who are tolerant of the products' complexity and other alleged flaws).

Why not get some input from people who have chosen not to use these products - what don't they like? Is there anything to be learned from their reasons for chosing not to use these tools?

re: Is CAB complex? And if so, Why?

Glenn Block — Mon, 28 May 2007 11:16:29 GMT

Thanks John

We actually have both people that are using it, and people that are not (but looking into it) about using it on our advisory board. All of our plans of what we are building are shared with the community as well. Feedback is welcome from those who use it and don't use it alike. This is the exact reason why I posted my "What would have us build post?"

re: Is CAB complex? And if so, Why?

Boris Drajer — Mon, 28 May 2007 13:40:45 GMT

I've been using CAB for a year now (built my company's application framework from scratch on top of CAB), and to me it's by far the most useful piece the P&P bunch has released so far. And I'm talking about CAB without SCSF... The SCSF part dictates an architecture that isn't entirely compatible with what I had in mind, and seems to impose some development overhead because it isn't entirely friendly to form designers.

I agree that CAB is complex, but necessarily so because it covers a lot of ground. What augments its percieved complexity - and annoys the hell out of me - is the fact that it's been almost a year and a half since CAB's first release and we have no decent documentation other than an API reference and ten hands-on labs. I still don't know the full details on how CAB is supposed to be implemented. So it's a small wonder that people who can't invest much time into evaluating CAB find it daunting. And because it's bigger than other DI frameworks, even for the people who understand DI it's hard to analyze more than a small part of CAB's source (as this is the only good way to learn it) so they tend to dismiss the rest of it as bloatware. At least this is how it looks to me... So, in summary: document the darned thing already: give us a class-by-class explanation of what it is and how it's supposed to be used. And then ask me what I want to see in v2.0, because I have some ideas ;)

re: Is CAB complex? And if so, Why?

Some One — Mon, 28 May 2007 18:50:04 GMT

I like CAB but at the same time it is too complex. One needs to keep in mind that a team of people work to write code. One person my understand the complexity but the majority wont. I just got done re-writing a recursive logic to stack iteration because of complexity. Not becasue it was slow or ineffeciant it was buggy. On top of that for others to debug it was to difficult figuring out parent child inheritance. Changed to stack iteration and the issue of complexity and debugging are gone.

Then like others have said lack of documentation or a real application using it. Luckly I have a Infragistics License and was able to get more info from that http://www.infragistics.com/hot/cab.aspx

So with complexity in of itself and lack of document it is used by some, but like my recursive logic if something goes wrong it is too complex to understand and troubleshoot. Then not to have good documentation and a real application to reverse engineer it turns CAB into goo.

What I did for my team was learn from it and build a specific framerwork for us without the complexity. Is the complexity there to meat the masses? In order to do that one must make a complex system? Our simple soultion is not that complex but it might not work for others either.

On thing also with complexity. I believe there are to kinds. One like my recursive logic where it is confined to maybe a method or two but all in one class file. But during execution and deubgging and trying to follow the execution pointer, and where you are at in the looping logic, and if the method is on the first or hunderedth cycle. Complexity in run time. Then the other is like CAB. I have one class file open but I need to go to a decleration of some object, or the base class this class is derived from. This is in another file and then another and yet another. Then when I get where I'm going and find the right class file, I forget what I was doing. Spent to much time trying to figure it out. Again this is where a real world sample comes in. I could say well how is done with this application. Also CAB has the run time complexity during run time and debugging I see the execution going through many methods and class library before I see any of my code run.

Finaly I don't think it is MS CAB that is complex, the concept is complex in of it self. I believe the concepts of MVP or MVC needs to be grounded with the programmers before starting. And maybe some GOF patterns relating to command meditor and watchers, the service concepts, also some unit testing and mock set ups.

re: Is CAB complex? And if so, Why?

Glenn Block — Mon, 28 May 2007 20:06:31 GMT

Some one and Boris, thanks for your feedback, and I feel your pain. I'm going to look into the documentation issue and see what we can do.

re: Is CAB complex? And if so, Why?

Some One — Mon, 28 May 2007 20:22:02 GMT

Another thing which is common with MS that makes it complex or confusing is the over use of Acronyms and assuming everyone knows them. The funny thing was while I was writing my previouse post I was thinking I know what CAB is (and not the file format confused?) but I don't know what C.A.B is. I know what a file with a .cab extension is? Just felt a bit wierd talking about something I know when I don't know what the acronym is.

CAB Composite User Interface Application Block

SCSF Smart Client Software Factory

WCSF Web Client Software Factory

WSSF Web Service Software Factory

Is there a way to send these over to the department that came up with names for Expression Studio to come up with a name for these and use a single word like Blend, Web, Design, Media? And stop using ancronyms.

Call it something anything or send these over to the code naming masters that gave a project a name like Longhorn. Not only that saying something like fancy-word is easier than SCSF or WSSF. By the way how are those acronyms pronounced? At times just trying to explain to a progammer what it does is hard when trying to us WSSF or SCSF in a spoken sentance. Luckly for us CAB worked out to be a word, is that pronounced like a yellow cab or taxi?

re: Is CAB complex? And if so, Why?

Some One — Mon, 28 May 2007 20:22:47 GMT

Thank You,

- Guy

re: Is CAB complex? And if so, Why?

TRAN Ngoc Van — Mon, 28 May 2007 22:25:12 GMT

I've been trying to use CAB from the very first releases of CAB. But until now, I still cant use CAB for my projects.

At one point, I dont know what should I do to achieve this, how to do that.

For a button, to change its layout, check out its properties. To handle events, check out event tab of property grid.

But for CAB, it's not that simple. There're lots of methods, function. I used to do this but I should do that to comply with CAB, etc...

I think the most important thing that concerns new CAB users is CAB document. Please some document for us, dummies.

I've seen you do this, do that. I've seen how wonderful CAB are, but please teach me how to do.

Observations From Recent Blog Wars

Certifications and Software Development — Mon, 28 May 2007 22:54:32 GMT

So over the past week, I've been following a bit of a stirring the blogosphere over the deliverables

re: Is CAB complex? And if so, Why?

Glenn Block — Tue, 29 May 2007 02:13:27 GMT

Regarding the documentation question. Did you see this whitepaper?

http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/0/3/103adb7f-1e45-42f8-8696-63e513875258/CAB%20SCSF%20-%20Architecture%20Guidance%20-%20Raiffeisen.pdf

Also David Platt has a book coming out on SCSF and CAB.

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Microsoft-Composite-Application-Software/dp/0735624143/ref=pd_bbs_4/002-8395838-6524815?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180393644&sr=8-4

Efficiency vs. Effectiveness, the CAB debate continues

Fear and Loathing — Tue, 29 May 2007 16:47:06 GMT

There's been two great posts on the CAB debate recently that were interesting. Jeremy Miller had an excellent

re: Is CAB complex? And if so, Why?

The Big Orange Heads — Tue, 29 May 2007 17:04:58 GMT

Having participated in one of the recent customer feedback sessions can I just say in support of Glenn what a beneficial experience it was.

It certainly allowed us to get a very good view on ent lib deliverables and come up with some ideas of direction that we want to go in. Hopefully we also provided some useful information the other way.

Also the SCSF has gone a long way to helping with the complexity of CAB. We were initially very concerned about the complexity of CAB and SCSF has allayed some of these concerns by making it much simpler to develop.

re: Is CAB complex? And if so, Why?

Boris Drajer — Tue, 29 May 2007 19:38:20 GMT

Thanks for your answer, Glenn! Yes, I forgot about the Raiffeisen example, it does make the broad picture a bit clearer. Unfortunately I found it only after I'd gotten the hang of CAB so I admit I never gave it that much attention... But even with it a lot of detail and some whole sections (like the ObjectBuilder API) are missing in what documents there are. I've been looking again at CAB documentation and tried to remember what troubled me the most: well, for one thing, there's no real introduction. It starts shooting bullet lists ;) and diagrams immediately with very brief explanations. It really needs to be much more readable (or point to some introductory text suitable for absolute beginners). One has to deduce the logic from working examples which is very hard.

As for the details, I think that just upgrading the existing help to MSDN standards should make things easier (currently, most of the classes and members have just a one-sentence description). I'll give you an example: what does WorkItemTypeCatalogService do? It is only briefly mentioned in the documentation and never explained. There's even a walkthrough that shows you how to use it but never says what it does. You have to google for it and even then the best explanation is John Luif's blog post from the CTP2 days. If I needed something this class provides I would have never found it because I'm not subscribed to John's blog ;).

Don't get me wrong: documentation is just part of the solution, a way to make the task of climbing the CAB-hill (and it is a hill, not a mountain) easier. General public should beware that CAB is not just a "utility library" like the other application blocks (or some DI alternatives, for that matter: this is why I like CAB more). Moving to dependency injection is similar to moving from procedural to object-oriented. On the other hand, CAB's nowhere nearly as big and complicated as, say, ASP.Net, so there's no justification for too much whining either :).

Too complex for Application Integration?

Paul — Wed, 30 May 2007 22:54:31 GMT

Are there any published applications that require developers to implement a CAB module in order to extend the main shell, add functionality, or extend a published module? It would seem that CAB is perfect for writing plug-ins (like for office applications). I believe if it was less complicated, you would see many applications using CAB for the plug-in arch. I don't know of any public applications outside of MS that use it.

Future of CAB?

Andrew — Thu, 31 May 2007 04:40:26 GMT

We are looking at CAB for a large customer project, for which it fits really well.

One concern however is the whether or not CAB has a future, with respect to the noises coming out about Acropolis?

The comments so far indicate a great deal of learning investment over CAB.. will this be wasted if Microsoft branch off in a different direction for Smart Client?

re: Is CAB complex? And if so, Why?

PandaWood — Thu, 31 May 2007 08:23:56 GMT

>>What about review by some people who are _not_ using it? ... Choosing reviewers from existing users will result in a somewhat "biased" sample.

This logic here is pretty funny... Why don't you get people who don't see a movie to review it? After all, you don't want actually seeing the movie to bias your review.

I can take the point though ;-) However it would be extremely difficult to find people who actively don't use it, to spend time giving input. And the quality of input would vary wildly depending on how much time they had invested into learning it.

Point #3 in this blog would seem to cater for what you're talking about anyway.

re: Is CAB complex? And if so, Why?

DickP — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 11:58:05 GMT

I have been looking at SCSF this week and I thought I would report my experience.

I am not an experienced UI developer. I am developing the smartclient for my ERP solution. It is now getting unmanageable so I was attracted to SCSF to bring order. SCSF seems to address many of the problems I am facing.

After looking at SCSF for several days I don't feel I fully understand it. I am reluctant to to implement it on my app because it might destroy productivity. I get the basic concepts, but I don't really understand how all the bits hang together.

The documentation is inadequate. Part of the problem is that SCSF introduces it's own vocabulary so that after a few paragraphs the documentation becomes a cacophony of noise.

SCSF is supposed to make CAB more useable. Unfortunately the effect is to compound the complexity and confusion.

If you are willing and able to stick with it no doubt the penny does drop eventually. Having said that, the few posts I have read indicate that even those who are using SCSF/CAB are not totally sure they are using them correctly, or fully.

SCSF/CAB are complex, but so are many things. The .net class libary is complex. I would go so far as to say that the current package is user aggressive. I cannot say if the problem is simply a lack of information, or if the overall approach is fundamentally deficient.

re: Is CAB complex? And if so, Why?

Chandra — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 03:32:10 GMT

I recently started reading CAB. I found the CAB interesting but complex to understand. Initially I read the documentation with lot of enthusism but gradually faded away. I am still reading the documentation after 2 days and still not confident that I will be able to use CAB in my projects. I feel the samples are not implemented in a consistent way which makes the CAB hader to understand.

re: Is CAB complex? And if so, Why?

Glenn Block — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 03:36:21 GMT

Hi Chandra

Did you look at the Smart Client Software Factory. SCSF builds on top of CAB but facilitates building a CAB application. Also there is more extensive docs within SmartClient in addition to several QuickStarts, and a Reference implementation that brings it all together.

If you have more questions, email me at gblock@microsoft.com

Building a Composite Application Framework

My Technobabble — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 11:10:23 GMT

In the wake of the "great debate" over the complexity of CAB, Jeremy Miller has done a series of posts

Icky CAB

Loosely Coupled Human Code Factory — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 01:05:23 GMT

Ok, I've been using CAB, the SCSF, in "pseudo kinda sort of" Model View Presenter Pattern usage. ...

all fine and well....

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"Prism" launches on CodePlex

My Technobabble — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 03:54:36 GMT

Some time ago we announced that patterns & practices was going to be delivering a new set of guidance

"Prism" launches on CodePlex

Noticias externas — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 04:04:37 GMT

Some time ago we announced that patterns & practices was going to be delivering a new set of guidance

'Prism' launches on CodePlex

Glenn Block — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:17:14 GMT

Some time ago we announced that patterns & practices was going to be delivering a new set of guidance

Composite Application Guidance is Live

My Technobabble — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:18:14 GMT

Before I go any further, we shipped! :-) Links: Composite Application Guidance Landing Page (will be

Composite Application Guidance is Live

Glenn Block — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:19:33 GMT

Before I go any further, we shipped! :-) Links: Composite Application Guidance Landing Page (will be

Composite Application Guidance is Live

Community Blogs — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:17:34 GMT

Before I go any further, we shipped! :-) Links: Composite Application Guidance Landing Page (will be