DevForce Simplifies Building Data-Intensive Silverlight Business Applications

IdeaBlade’s Ward Bell shows MIX attendees the future of business application development

HIGHLIGHTS:

·         IdeaBlade enables rapid development of data-intensive Silverlight business applications

·         One of the first third-party providers to demonstrate integration with Silverlight 3

·         Special early adopter pricing for DevForce Silverlight

MIX 09, Las Vegas, NV, March 19, 2009 - IdeaBlade, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise application development tools and infrastructure for the Microsoft .NET Framework, today announced the availability of DevForce Silverlight, an advanced application development framework which allows developers to rapidly build data-intensive Silverlight business applications.

Building on the strengths of DevForce WinClient, DevForce Silverlight allows RIA developers to build scalable enterprise applications utilizing Silverlight and the Entity Framework.  Ward Bell, Vice-President of Product Management for IdeaBlade and Microsoft MVP, demonstrated how developers can quickly and easily build line-of-business applications using DevForce Silverlight at the MIX09 conference this week.

“IdeaBlade has years of experience building object-relational mapping tools. It has applied that experience to DevForce Silverlight, giving RIA developers the ability to build a rich domain model for their Silverlight application” says Albert Wang, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of IdeaBlade.  “With our previous expertise in building n-tier data models combined with our integration with the new Silverlight 3 UI controls and validation, we feel developers have an environment to create powerful enterprise applications using Silverlight.”

In his MIX presentation, Bell proclaims “Silverlight is ready for business application development.  All business applications start with data. And managing data has been a challenge for Silverlight developers – until now. “ Demonstrating features such as client-side caching, the ability to execute full LINQ statements on the client, offline access, and enhanced validation, DevForce Silverlight provides the missing data pieces to allow developers to manage and move data within the  n-tier, asynchronous Silverlight environment.

Taking Notice of Silverlight for Business

By filling the need for managing data in a Silverlight application, IdeaBlade has caught the eye of Microsoft, the press and developer community. 

Tim Heuer, Community Program Manager for Silverlight had this to say about DevForce Silverlight:

“After one look at IdeaBlade’s solution, developers will be amazed with how quickly the technology allows them to create a traditional line-of-business application with Silverlight, leveraging all the features of the Silverlight platform,” said Tim Heuer, community program manager for Silverlight at Microsoft. “ Microsoft is pleased to be working with IdeaBlade to provide developers with another choice of a framework that allows them to quickly and easily utilize what they already know in Silverlight and the ADO.NET Entity Framework.”

In an Microsoft Developer Network video on Channel 9, Adam Kinney, technical evangelist for UI platforms at Microsoft stated,“My favorite feature of DevForce Silverlight is the ability to run LINQ statements from within the client without having to touch the server. In the rich client application world, this makes development a lot easier.”

Mary-Jo Foley of ZDNet: “This year’s Mix looks a bit more business-focused (since) business uses of Microsoft’s Web-centric technologies are getting a surprising amount of attention at this year’s (conference).”

Even the developer community is talking about DevForce Silverlight: 

“…this really does look way too easy, so a very well done to IdeaBlade.”

“This looks very sweet.”

“This is indeed impressive.”

DevForce Silverlight Special Offer

 IdeaBlade knows the challenges facing developers in creating line-of-business applications. That’s why the company has created a limited time offer to receive DevForce Silverlight RC1 for $995 per developer.

Microsoft’s Heuer concludes:  “IdeaBlade has one of the best out-of-box solutions for developers to rapidly develop data-intense applications with Silverlight and the .NET Framework.” See for yourself with the DevForce Silverlight Special Offer today.

Editor’s note: IdeaBlade’s Ward Bell will be available for interview and to demonstrate DevForce Silverlight until the end of MIX09. Please contact Michael Davis at michaeld@ideablade.com, 415.990.2445.

About IdeaBlade

IdeaBlade, Inc., is a leading supplier of .NET Framework tools and infrastructure for rapid development and deployment of enterprise Internet applications.  IdeaBlade's DevForce framework, which extends the Microsoft .NET Framework with class libraries, components, RAD tools, and a business object server, enables developers to focus on delivering business value while they shorten their development cycles by more than half. Founded in 2001, IdeaBlade has delivered .NET Framework development solutions to hundreds of independent software vendors (ISVs) and enterprises in many industries including: healthcare, insurance, finance, education, agriculture, biotechnology, and business services.  IdeaBlade is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and member of the Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) program.  For more information on IdeaBlade products and services visit www.ideablade.com.