Pomegranate - Overview and Technical Design Document

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Overview and Technical DesignInsurance Agent Portal, Pomegranate

This document describes the features and technical design of theexemplar code-named Pomegranate. This applicationis a

SharePoint (ASP.Net) web portal for use by Insurance Agents to

manger customers policies and claims.

Todd Snyder

6/27/2008


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Vision/Scope Document

Copyright 2008 Infragistics, Inc.

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ContentsIntroduction ................................................................................................................................................................3

Application Overview .................................................................................................................................................4

Dashboard View .....................................................................................................................................................4

Customer Details View ...........................................................................................................................................5

Quote and Customer Views ....................................................................................................................................6

Technical Notes ......................................................................................................................................................6

Architecture and Technical Design .............................................................................................................................7

Technology .............................................................................................................................................................7

Microsoft SharePoint Service (WSS) 3.0 SP1 ......................................................................................................8

Net Advantage for ASP.NET 2008.2 ....................................................................................................................9

Windows 2003 Server ...................................................................................................................................... 11

SQL Server 2005 ............................................................................................................................................... 11

Layers ................................................................................................................................................................... 12

Design Patterns and Principals ............................................................................................................................ 12

Principals ......................................................................................................................................................... 13

MVP Pattern .................................................................................................................................................... 13

Adapter Pattern ............................................................................................................................................... 16

Repository Pattern ........................................................................................................................................... 17

Provider Model Pattern ................................................................................................................................... 19

AJAX and SharePoint ........................................................................................................................................... 21

Summary .................................................................................................................................................................. 23


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IntroductionPomegranate is an insurance agent portal SharePoint exemplar (Reference Application). The application is built

using Windows SharePoint Services SP1, ASP.NET 2.0 and the Net Advantage for ASP.NET version 2008.2/Aikido

June CTP. The portal application utilizes a backend SQL Server 2005 (Express) database to store customerinformation and Key Performance Indicators (KPI).

The design philosophy we used to build the exemplar was a pragmatic SCRUM approach. The application was

build over the course of several small 1 to 2 weeks sprints. Each sprint focused on building out a different set of

features. To help facilitate this approach we applied several design best practices including Test Driven

Development, refactoring, design patterns and principals.

This document Is broken down into two sections:

Application Overview: Gives an overview of the different screens in the application and their features.Architecture and Technical Design: Examines the technology and design approach used to build the

application.

The exemplar can be viewed at the following URL:http://sharepoint.infragistics.com.
http://sharepoint.infragistics.com/http://sharepoint.infragistics.com/http://sharepoint.infragistics.com/http://sharepoint.infragistics.com/


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Application OverviewThe applications include two main screens. A dashboard view that displays six web parts: Company News,

Pending Quotes, New Policies Per Year, Active Polices by Type, Quote to Bind Ratio, and Agent Summary. The

second screen is a customer detail view that is displayed as a popup dialog when a user clicks on one of thecustomers listed the pending quotes web part.

Dashboard View

The dashboard view display six web parts that an insurance agent uses to track pending customer quotes and

other customer based KPI(s).

Figure 1: Dashboard Screen

Web Parts:

Company News: Displays the latest company news. Pending Quotes: Displays a list of pending quotes for the agents customers.New Policy per Year: Displays the number of new policies that the agent has sold per year for the

current and last two fiscal years.

Active Policy by Type: Displays a chart showing the percent of each active policy type within a specifieddate range. The user can filter the percent shown by adjusting the starting/ending expiration date filter.


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Quote to Bind Ratio: Displays the current quote to bind ratio (Percent of Accepted Quotes) for one ormore policy types. The user can filter the policy types used by selecting one or more types.

Agent Summary: Displays several KPI for the agent including: # of Customers, Direct Loss, Expense, and

Loss Ratio (Direct Loss + Expense / total customer premium).

Customer Details View

The customer detail screen is displayed when a user selects one of the customers listed in the pending quotes

web part. The screen is hosted in a dialog control and it displays detail information (Bio, Polices & Claims) about

a customer.

Figure 2: Customer Detail Dialog


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Quote and Customer Views

These screens are not implemented and only exist to display additional links in the applications main menu.

Figure 3: Screen not implemented

Technical Notes

The following Net Advantage for ASP.Net controls are usedoWebChartoWebDialogoWebDataGrid - Currently using the June CTP releaseoWebGaugeoWebGrid - Used on the Customer Detail ScreenoWeb Slider

The active By Policy and Quote to Bind Ratio web parts use MS AJAX (Update Panels) to support dynamic livefiltering of data.

The user Interface (UI) has been branded using a custom SharePoint theme (CSS, Images, Etc)


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Architecture and Technical DesignThis section goes into detail about the architecture and technical designed used to build the application.

Technology

There are several technical components used to build the exemplar. One of the key first decisions when

designing a system is to identify when to built VS buy components. The approach we took in the exemplar was

to utilize 3rd

party components to address the core features of the system and write custom code that integrated

the pre-built components.

Key Components Used:

Microsoft SharePoint Service (WSS) 3.0 SP1Net Advantage for ASP.NET 2008.2

Windows 2003 Server

SQL Server 2005


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Microsoft SharePoint Service (WSS) 3.0 SP1

WSS is a free add-on component to Windows 2003/2008. It is a web application framework for building

collaborate based solutions. If you need more advanced features you can switch over to using the Microsoft

Office SharePoint Sever (MOSS). MOSS is a full blown enterprise platform that includes advanced features for

content management, search, and form based data entry. The exemplar will run find of either version of

SharePoint.

The main features of WSS that are used by the exemplar include site provisioning, branding, and application

hosting. WSS includes additional feature that maybe used by a future version of the exemplar including custom

lists, workflows, and reporting capabilities.

Once you decided to use SharePoint that are two key technical design decisions that need to be made. First, you

need to determine which type of server farm you want to use and second you need to define the information

taxonomy needed to meet your requirements.

For the exemplar we want with a simple approach for both of these: On the hosted version of the example.

http://sharepoint.infragistics.comwe are using a single server configuration and single top level site. For a more

advance solution you may want to consider one of the other serve farm types and typically most applications

require a much more advance information taxonomy.

Figure 4: Pomegranate Online Server Topology

References:

SharePoint Deployment SharePoint Application Planning and Architecture
http://sharepoint.infragistics.com/http://sharepoint.infragistics.com/http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262957(TechNet.10).aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262957(TechNet.10).aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288426(TechNet.10).aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288426(TechNet.10).aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288426(TechNet.10).aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262957(TechNet.10).aspxhttp://sharepoint.infragistics.com/


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Net Advantage for ASP.NET 2008.2

The exemplar takes advanced of several of the features (data visualization, data presentation, and filtering

capabilities) included in the Net Advantage for ASP.NET control suite. By using this approach we were able to

focus on the business problem that needed to be solved; while harnessing the power of Net Advantage for

ASP.NET for building application with great user experience (UX).

Data Visualization

Figure 5: WebChart showing Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

Figure 6: WebGauge showing Key Performance Indicators (KPI)


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Figure 7: WebSlider used to filter data

Figure 8: Presenting data in the WebDataGrid


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Figure 9: WebDialog displaying Customer Detail Screen

Windows 2003 Server

This is a required component for running Windows SharePoint services. If you prefer you could install the

exemplar on a Windows 2008 server.

Reference:Details about Windows 2003

SQL Server 2005

This is a required component for running Windows SharePoint services. For production systems it is recommend

running the standard or enterprise version of SQL server. But, for simple solutions you can use SQL Express.

Reference:SQL Server 2005
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/default.mspxhttp://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/default.mspxhttp://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/default.mspxhttp://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/default.aspxhttp://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/default.aspxhttp://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/default.aspxhttp://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/default.aspxhttp://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/default.mspx


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Layers

This section gives a quick overview of the logical view (Layers) of the application. The core design approach used

to build the exemplar was to build out a custom web part framework. The framework uses the Model View

Presenter pattern to separate the concerns for each web part into three components: View (Custom Web Part),

Model (Custom Business Classes: Customer, Policy, Claim), and Presenter (Controller that orchestrates the

communication between the view and the model).

Figure 10: The design of the custom web part framework used in the exemplar.

The View is responsible for instantiating its presenter. Once the view is ready it notifies its presenter; which

loads the model and binds it to the view.

The view is loosely coupled from the presenter because the presenter only uses the views interface to

communicate with the view. This allows the highest level of unit testing because you can create unit tests

without requiring the ASP.Net process to be loaded. In addition, you can minimize the dependencies between

the view and the model.

Design Patterns and Principals

The key to successfully building enterprise based system is to utilize proven best practices and design

approaches. While building the exemplar we utilize several industry best practices for building enterprise .NET

applications.


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Principals

Separation of Concerns: This is a principal where you separate the concerns for a use case into severaldifferent classes. For example the Model View Presenter (MVP) Pattern separates code into views,

models, and presenters.

Single responsibility principal: This is a principal where you focus on making classes have high cohesionand try to avoid overloading the reasonability of the class.

Test Driven Development: This is a design approach where you write test first to help drive out thedesign of a system.

Refactoring: This is a design technique for restructuring an existing body of code, altering its internalstructure without changing its external behavior.

MVP Pattern

The Model View Presenter (MVP) pattern is a variation of the Model View Controller (MVC) pattern. Both

patterns promote separating the concern for a use case across three distinct types of classes: Model, Presenter

(Controller), and View. The major differences between the MVP and MVC pattern is that the MVP pattern

focuses more on separating the dependencies between the different components (Model, View, Presenter). By

doing this you can increase the testability of the overall solution.

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_View_Presenter

How its used in the Exemplar:

The following code listing illustrates how the MVP pattern is implemented in the exemplar.

Figure 11: Example interface used to implement the MVP Pattern
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_View_Presenterhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_View_Presenterhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_View_Presenter


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Figure 12: View (Web Part) implements the view interface

Figure 13: View (Web Part) instantiates its presenter


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Figure 14: Presenter loads the model and binds it to the view.


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Adapter Pattern

The adapter pattern promotes establishing a simpler interface between two components that depend on each

other. This is used a lot when implementing the MVP pattern to simply the interface used between the views

and its presenter. In addition an adapter pattern maybe used to consolidate communication between multi

classes or hide the complexity of one class that has lot of dependencies with other components.

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adapter_pattern


The diagram below illustrates how the adapter pattern is used in the exemplar to isolate the presenter from the

WebChart Control. By using this approach we can assign the responsibility for binding the model to the

WebChart to the presenter. This will allow us to better test the behavior of loading data from the model into the

chart.

When the unit test is created the presenter will talk to a mock chart adapter that will simulate the process of

creating data series and data points on the chart. The purpose of the test is to validate the presenter can handle

binding the model to the chart (via its adapter).

Figure 15: Adapter pattern used to separate the presenter from underling control type used by the view.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adapter_patternhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adapter_patternhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adapter_pattern


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Repository Pattern

The repository pattern is a data access pattern that promotes loosely coupling the model from its data source(s).

The main goal of the pattern is to act as an in memory data repository that uses data mapper type classes to

load data into and out of the model.

By using this approach you can achieve a higher level of persist ignorance; which will increase the overall

testability of your code. In addition you can easily handle adding additional data sources or changing data access

technology (e.g. from ADO.NET to LINQ or NHibernate) without impacting the core (View & Model) of your

application.

Reference:

http://martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/repository.html


The diagram & code listing below illustrate how the repository pattern is used by the exemplar. Because most of

the data used in the exemplar is read only we went with a simply repository implementation that mapped

ADO.Net data readers/data commands to and from our domain model.

Note: The adapter pattern was used to wrap the standard ADO.Net classes (Connection, Command, Parameters,

& data readers). This allowed us to better unit test the mapping code used by the repository.

Figure 16: Key classes used by the exemplar to implement the repository pattern
http://martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/repository.htmlhttp://martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/repository.htmlhttp://martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/repository.html


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Figure 17: Example of a repository mapping a data reader to a domain model.


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Provider Model Pattern

The provider model pattern promotes loosely coupling components in a system using the concept of

dependency injection (DI). Dependency injection is used to separate dependencies between one or more

components. Instead of two components having a hard reference between them; components rely on a DI

container to inject the dependency at runtime. For the exemplar we are using the built in DI capabilities of the

.Net framework that use reflection to load a configured provider up when an application loads.

Reference:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972319.aspx


The diagram below contains the key classes used by the exemplar to implement the provider model. The

exemplar has a portal data provider that is used for accessing the customer KPI(s) data. The data provider used

is configured in the exemplars (SharePoint) web.config. This approach allows us to easily support additional data

sources in the future without requiring major changes to the application.

Figure 18: Classes used to implement the provide model pattern.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972319.aspxhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972319.aspxhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972319.aspx


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Figure 19: Entry in web.config used for defining the portal data provider


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AJAX and SharePoint

One the biggest technical hurdles to overcome when working with SharePoint is integrating AJAX features into

an application. AJAX is a powerful technology that allows a web application to talk back to its host server

without requiring a full page post back. By utilizing the Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX Extensions 1.0 toolkit it is pretty

easy to integrate AJAX capabilities into an ASP.Net application. Unfortunately, getting the ASP.NET Extensions to

work with SharePoint is not as easy.

The major differences between incorporating AJAX into a standard ASP.NET web site and a SharePoint web site

is that inside of SharePoint the developer does not have full control over the ASPX pages used. Instead the

developer creates custom features (Web Parts, Field Controls, etc) that are hosted in SharePoint. In addition

its typical that a SharePoint site may be running other web parts created by Microsoft or a 3rd party vender on

the same page as your custom web parts. Because of this you need to need to use caution in how and when you

use AJAX on a SharePoint web site.

How its used in the Exemplar:Out of the box SharePoint does not automatically support AJAX and there were few things we had to do to get

AJAX setup to run properly under SharePoint. First we had to create a custom default.master page that

contained an ASP.NET AJAX Script manager control (Note: this control is required to use the Net Advantage for

ASP.NET Aikido controls) and then we had to write some custom JavaScript that allows SharePoint to properly

handle AJAX calls.

In additional we minimized the use of AJAX to only web parts that required on demand filtering. The web parts

that require this type of functionality use an ASP.NET UpdatePanel control that is setup to do partial page

rendering. The UpdatePanel is a powerful control that allows you to easily incorporate AJA X functionality into a

web site. But, its important to remember that using them comes with some caveats. When an Update Panelfires an AJAX calls it still triggers the full page life cycle inside of ASP.NET page. This means that all the web parts

on a page will do normal processing (e.g. access a data source) unless you verify which update panel trigger the

async call and limited the processing only to them.

One other major issue we ran into incorporating AJAX into SharePoint was always getting the pages to properly

fire AJAX calls. The custom JavaScript code that we used to fire AJAX calls has some limitations that prevent it

from working properly when a SharePoint page does not contain at least one of the out of the box SharePoint

web part. Fortunately, to work around this limitation you can get the AJAX calls to work by adding a list view

web part control. Once the control is on the web page the custom JavaScript properly fires AJAX calls. If you

prefer not to display the normal SharePoint web parts you can mark them as hidden. Hidden web parts still will

allow the AJAX call to work properly.


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Figure 20: Setting up update panel and registering JavaScript to make AJAX work

Figure 21: JavaScript code required to make AJAX calls work with SharePoint. See link for more details

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941955
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941955http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941955http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941955


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SummaryThe Pomegranate exemplar is a great reference application that shows how to build custom web parts that run

inside of SharePoint. This document outlined the approach we took for building out the application as well as

how we were able to utilize Net Advantage for ASP.NEt to enhance the capabilities of the SharePoint platform.

Documents

Pomegranate - Overview and Technical Design Document