Yesterday I focused on the REST, and Javascript API's, and today's task is to get the skinny on the re-vamped .NET ADF.

In talking to some folks, apparently the .NET ADF includes a Javascript API based on the Microsoft Ajax client library. In contrast to the relatively simple Dojo based API, apparently this one has more depth, and with that (one would assume) comes more fine grained capabilities. So, we'll see what some pointed questions can drag out.

At a high level, I think that the .NET ADF may have a tough sell moving forward. The REST stuff is clean and elegant. It may be that on paper it can't do as much, but I believe that there are creative solutions that can step around any limitations. Secondly, everyone I've talked to who has used the 9.2 .NET ADF, well, I'll be charitable and say they are "luke warm" on it. The difficulties they faced in getting good performance, and implementing seemingly simple functionality is what will drive them to try the REST API before the .NET ADF. And if the licensing story for the .NET ADF remains the same, and the REST API is gratis, well, money talks.

I hope that the 9.3 ADF does more than support the ASP.NET Ajax "extender" model (this is how the Ajax Control Toolkit works). From my work with the toolkit (which has been restricted to the ModalPopupExtender and the ListSearchExtender), it's a nice model if you really want to keep your fingers out of the client side code. The difficulty is that since the extenders are setup as part of the page lifecycle, they seem to need everything they interact with to be "runat=server". For reasons I'll skip right now, this is not always easily done. Since all this behavior is implemented in the client, theoretically you can wire up events and use the client side code however you like, but in the Control Toolkit, this is not exactly documented (please send me details if you know otherwise!).

Getting back to the .NET ADF, I hope that the Javascript libraries are designed to be directly consumed and manipulated. Personally I like the Microsoft Ajax client library, and working with server side services is just a slick developer experience. So - I have high hopes.