devexpress-xaf-business-model

What problem does it solve?

XAF developers often struggle with correctly implementing business model classes, choosing appropriate base classes, defining valid entity relationships, registering types properly, and avoiding ORM-specific pitfalls that cause runtime errors, broken UI generation, or database schema mismatches.

Core Features & Use Cases

• Dual ORM Support: Provides complete patterns for both Entity Framework Core (recommended) and XPO, the two supported ORMs for XAF business models.
• Relationship & Attribute Guidance: Includes code templates for one-to-many, many-to-many, aggregated, and one-to-one relationships, plus all common XAF attributes for UI and metadata control.
• End-to-End Workflow Support: Covers entity registration, seed data setup, EF Core migration configuration, and reverse-engineering existing databases for XAF use.
• Use Case: A developer building an XAF inventory management system can use this skill to correctly define Product and Category entities with a one-to-many relationship, apply XAF navigation attributes, and set up initial category seed data without manual trial and error.

Quick Start

Use this skill to create a new XAF business class for a Contact entity with FirstName and LastName properties, a one-to-many relationship to a Department entity, and default values set on object creation, using XPO as the ORM.