MVVM – MEF – Reactive Data Grid – Part I

I want to explore some of the issues with MVVM, MEF, and Reactive Extensions in developing .NET applications. I’ve created an example Silverlight application that employs these technologies in some interesting ways. I’ll use this example as the basis for our discussion.

First, an overview.

The application displays a simple data grid. The grid itself has a defined set of columns that it can display (bound to the data elements that it knows the data source contains). The actual columns that are displayed and the order of these columns can be modified by selecting a different “view” for the data grid. The user selects the view through a drop-down box above the grid.

For this example application, the data is built using random values for few data types: strings, boolean, and DateTime. The views are requested from the server and update the visibility, display order, and width of the grid columns. Even though actual web services are not used, this application provides a simulated service interface to obtain these data elements.

This project was built using Visual Studio 2010. The source code can be downloaded from CodePlex.

Here are the links to the posts in this series:

• Part I – Overview
• Part II – MEF Integration
• Part III – Reactive Services
• Part IV – Reactive Event Handling

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