Digging for more informaton

[Shannon Beltz]

Good Friday Afternoon,

My name is Shannon and I work for Corvesta Inc.  My company is in the process of embarking on a very large project which will entail the replacement of current PL/SQL code with a more robust DoI Framework.  The Frameworks team has gone through the initial due diligence and have narrowed down our selection to two products.  Castle Windsor and Autofac.

 

So we are now on a fact finding mission.  Since both of these products are open source, and depend upon the community as a whole to determine the direction of the product, it has been difficult to find more information or a source in which I can get some pretty straight forward questions answered.  If this is not the correct place to be with this post, please point me in the correct direction.

So I am writing today to see if I can flush out some information so we can more thoroughly rate these products appropriately.  If you could kindly take a few moments to answer some of the questions below, your efforts will be greatly appreciated.  If you do not have answers, if you could be honest and just put that, I would greatly appreciate that as well.  Regardless, any information will be helpful in our decision making process to determine which product is going to better suit our needs as we move forward.

 

1.      Do you have an externally facing road map?  We are trying to assess what will work in our environment better.

2.      Do you have a standard release schedule?  Both for minor releases and major releases?

a.      How well planned out are releases?

b.      How often do you plan releases?  Both major and minor.

c.      What is the estimated time from planning stage to release?

3.      Do you see your software being familiar in the next 5-10 years as it matures?

a.      Will we be able to bring on subject matter experts or do you see the product leaving the evolutionary track for a much broader base?

4.      Where do you see the software enhancement heading in the future?

a.      What do you think you will be doing in 5-6 years?

5.      Let’s say our company plans on changing technology within the 5-6 year time frame.  Do you still see yourself in this business?

6.      Who else uses your product?

7.      Do you offer paid support, enterprise/commercial support or is it just forum based public support?

Thank you again for any time you are able to spare for this.

 

Shannon Beltz

[Ken Egozi]

Hi Shannon.

I think that one of the most important questions for picking up a dependency on an OSS, is how helpful is the online casual support. In the case of Castle Project, the users mailing list (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/castle-project-users) is very responsive. Most questions are being answered very quickly, by other users with experience, as well as core members. StackOverflow questions are also very well covered. I am not on the Autofac list so I cannot comment on that.

Having said all that, when properly implemented, the container should be 100% transparent and isolated from any application code. With that in mind and considering that Windsor and Autofac are mostly comparable, this should not be an important decision. Pick the one that more people on the team are comfortable with. Or the one that has a nicer theme.

As for paid support - there are always experienced consultants that can help out with Windsor, you could locate them at the users list (link provided earlier) just in case you get stuck, or if you need a little head-start to get you started. 

Ken Egozi.
http://kenegozi.com/

http://www.activegiver.com/

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