We are migrating our applications to VB.Net 2008 from Classic VB and I need to create a base namespace and business layer. My method of approach is going to be to visit our top BA and identify the common areas of our (Fixed Income) company and try to form a decent inheritence model with as much of the code in generics as possible.
What’s everyone’s experience of doing this and also as a second part of the question, we are looking at incorporating Web Focus into the OLAP side, how would this affect the design of the corporate namespace and it’s derivatives?
I think the best way to begin to create a corporate .NET framework is to begin by harvesting existing code out of current corporate projects. Building a framework from scratch by talking to a BA without writing code for a specific, concrete project might lead you to over design the framework in some areas and totally miss some necessary features in others (as well, it might place artificial constraints on your framework clients for no good reason).
See Fowler’s entry on Harvested Framework and this blog post for a more complete explanation.
I’m not familiar with Web Focus but I’m guessing it would affect it in some way, however, if you go with a Harvested Framework, your usage of it in the first few applications you build will shape how you use Web Focus within the framework.