I’m beginning modelling an existing application for controlling a cash collection terminal. I’m very new to the Prism / Composite Application Library and would like some advice on how I could begin modelling this application using the Prism library.
Basically the application manages a cash terminal that accepts frequent cash drops, counts notes in the deposits, communicates via a 3G/Edge connection with our central server to replicate deposit and other data, and performs cashups. Central to all this is management of the cash canister. The application is not UI intensive, but we are moving away from WinForms to WPF, and I am supposed to use this framework for all future development.
At its most fundamental core, Prism is an application composition framework. It allows you to modularize your application. The thing to start thinking about it what parts of your application need to be modular.
A module is a unit of functionality that is useful on its own, but doesn’t make the application useless if it is replaced or removed. For example, in an application I’ve written for work we have two different types of contacts for which we handle cases. We have a module for each contact type that contributes functionality specific to that contact type. The application is still usable without one or the other and in this way we can work on or test each component individually as well as together.
Hopefully this gives you a guide to how to model your application. Prism seems complicated, but it helps to understand that what you really get with Prism is this ability to slice up your application. From a high level, this is what you’d probably be more interested in modeling.