Note: Starting from the 15th of April 2011 until the 6th of
May 2011 I will be off-island. During this period I will not have access to the
internet so I will not able to approve you comments or either to read and answer
them. You can try to send me an e-mail using the contact form but I can’t
guarantee you that I will be able to read it.

I have received many queries about my first book on LOB applications so in this

post I will try to answer to most of them. Please forgive me in advance if I

can’t answer to all your queries.

  • Source code
    Many of you are wondering why the source code of the demo

    application for the MVVM book is “skinny” and why I didn’t provide a full

    working application.
    The book has been released and the work behind it is

    huge. This book is supposed to be a guideline for a senior developer on how to

    architect a LOB application so in my opinion it was not necessary to provide all

    the code required to make a fully working application. I mean the application

    works but I left the “finishing touch” to the reader. Anyway, due to the high

    demand, I will work on this and during the summer I will post new versions of

    the app probably on CodePlex so that I can be an Open Source project where each

    dev interested can put some effort on it.

  • APRESS WPF Book vs MS MVVM book
    Why Raf wrote two books and not one? First

    let me say that Microsoft and APRESS are two separated

    companies; my “MVVM” book has been published by Oreilly for Microsoft Press

    while my APRESS book will be published by APRESS … The first one talks about

    “Architecting a LOB application and the MVVM pattern” while the second one

    “teach you from scratch a layered WPF application”. If you want a reference to

    layer an application you have to buy the first book,
    especially if you are new to the topic (layering)    , if you want to learn: WPF,

    MVVM, Entity Framework, threading on WPF and more you have to buy the second

    one, event if you are a middle expert WPF developer.

I do not like to blown my own trumpet and who has worked with me can confirm

that, but, if you are interested in learning WPF and learning how to architect a

LOB application you have to buy both books as just one will not cover all the

topics you need to master this technology. I would personally buy the MS PRESS

book, read it once, then buy the APRESS WPF book, read it and build the sample

application, then read again the MS PRESS one.

 The final note is about the comments. The book is on Amazon.com and OReilly.com

and as an author I would kindly appreciate if you can post a comment that

explains what you liked and what you didn’t like about the books. Posting a

comment with 2 stars saying “the source code is not available” while it is on

OReilly.com, it is just silly and doesn’t help anybody … If you have a problem

with the source code, feel to contact me, even if you disagree with some of my

ideas exposed in my books. I have a wide open mentality and I love to have

“constructive discussions” with my readers.