Thursday, May 06, 2004 5:27:18 PM
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I spent a little while today checking out 3 different open source ASP.NET issue tracking applications. We need something like this at work so I was trying to find the best one to give me a jump start figuring I can add any features not already there but why re-invent the wheel with so much good free open source stuff out there. The first one I checked out was a project on SourceForge.net called BugTracker.NET. It has nice features and is in C# as are all the ones I looked at today but what shyed me away from it was that the code was not in code behind but in script tags all mingled with the markup. I'm not used to working that way and I prefer to keep the code as separated from the declarative markup and presentation stuff as possible. I think this one was developed in a text editor, it didn't come with a project or solution for VS.NET. I'm not oppposed to developing with a text editor but the code behind structure is important to me and there is nothing preventing one from doing that even if you are using the command line compiler. I spent a little while trying to move the code from the script tags into code behind files but finally decided to look for other possible starter applications.
Actually I knew there was one at ASP.NET put out by Microsoft as reference architecture so I figured I would check it out. And I did, but it was missing an important feature for an issue tracking application, it didn't have a file attachment feature. Bugs often are reported by someone doing a screen capture to show an error message and I needed this feature. The above application had it but the MS starter kit did not. I was frustrated enough at the inline code problem that going back to it was not an option, it just wasn't as good an architecture so I figured I would develop an attachment feature on top of the starter kit. Luckily for me I decided to peruse the ASP.NET forum associated with the starter kit and found where someone else had posted a message about needing the attachment feature and saying he'd found it in a project on the GotDotNet workspaces that appeared to be based on the starter kit but had some additional features. Its called BugNet and it is a very well architected application. It makes use of the Microsoft Application Blocks for Data and Exception Management and has a cleanly defined separation between UI, business, and data layers. Some of you may have read about Master Pages, a feature we can loook forward to in ASP.NET 2.0 that will make it much easier to templatize layout, but Paul Wilson has already implemented it for the current .NET release and his model is incorporated in this app. Its a great reference application for those wanting to learn ASP.NET, OOP, and be ready for the next version of ASP.NET. This is the one we decided to go with. I still need to add some reporting capabilities and once its released to our team I'm sure I'll need to add features based on user input. I'm excited about it, it could evolve into a full project management solution in ASP.NET.
Copyright 2003-2010 Joe Audette