Current
Open Box developers have the good fortune of being exposed to a wide range of approaches and technologies; this is largely attributed to the many applications developed over the years, for very different clients with very different requirements.
The majority of our applications are ASP.NET solutions for internal use by our clients, ranging from .NET 1.1 projects written in Visual Basic to .NET 3.5 projects written in C#. We’ve also developed a number of public facing websites, some of which required custom content management systems to be delivered alongside. In addition, we work with Windows Forms, an example of which is a Point of Sale application implemented on touch screen teller machines.
Our latest projects make use of Microsoft’s LINQ framework and LINQ to SQL for object-relational mapping. Our pre-LINQ projects make use of a proprietary, in-house ORM tool affectionately known as Code Monkey. If you look carefully around the office you might even notice little red plastic monkeys dangling from plants and monitors – our Code Monkey mascots.
We’ve experimented with various AJAX frameworks but have settled on the jQuery JavaScript library, Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX Framework and the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. This just makes good sense, given that the framework is built into .NET, is less cumbersome and is easier to support than the alternatives.
Developers are also gaining exposure to Microsoft web services, which we are increasingly using on new projects in the form of WCF (Windows Communication Foundation; .NET 3.5) and ASMX (.NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0).
When it comes to data warehousing we are also right on the forefront using the latest Microsoft Business intelligence stack. This includes technologies like Analysis Services 2008, Integration Services 2008 and SQL Server 2008.
Developers at Open Box can expect to work with most of these technologies during their time at the company. We like to move people between projects every now and then, to provide exposure to new and different technologies, and to other developers with different skill sets. Not unlike a familiar petroleum company, we like to keep you moving!
Looking Ahead
Open Box developers are continually investigating current and upcoming technologies to ensure that we stay on the cutting edge. As our existing applications evolve over time, and as new projects kick off, we constantly look to implement newer technologies and the latest approaches wherever they make sense.
In particular, we follow new developments on the Microsoft front with keen interest.
Amongst the technologies we are currently investigating is Microsoft’s new Visual Studio 2010 Development Environment along with its host of new technologies and features, including the core .NET Framework 4.0.
Microsoft’s ASP.NET Model View Controller pattern is also of interest. Currently we use the Model View Presenter pattern on a number of projects and we are optimistic that MVC will provide a number of benefits over MVP.
We are also eagerly awaiting the release of Microsoft’s next version of LINQ to Entities. After doing research into the previous version of this technology we found it could not best our current implementation of LINQ to SQL. While we’re big fans of LINQ to SQL, it does have a number of shortcomings that the next version of LINQ to Entities will hopefully solve.
Microsoft Project Code Named "Velocity" is another upcoming project we’re watching closely. Our developers are very excited about the potential to increase the performance and load-balance using this exciting new caching technology.
We’ve even held an internal innovation competition, with guys going to considerable effort in their free time to develop proof of concept applications using new technologies and tools like Silverlight and Google Gears. We like to believe that it was all for the love of discovery, and that the prizes had nothing to do with it!