Multiple Questions on domains, .net framework

Alright!! I have researched the whole forum and I am confused with old and new posts. Thats the reason for this post. I want the right answer and right approach to do this thing. We been studying and trying out sitefinity for long since version 2.5 I guess. Now its in version 4.0. Hope it got much better with new functionalities.

Scenorio: We have 2 parts to our website, Customer and Corporate and both resides in one domain. We been testing and working with sitefinity by creating 2 seperate sitefinity applicaiton for each because we plan to split it to 2 domains. But both domains shares same database for content currently and we want to keep it that way.

Questions:

1. With new version coming out, can we have 2 seperate domains use one application/instance with one database. The contents might be shared but not all of them. For example, corporate domain will have seperate pages but should be able to have access to common customer KB. Similarly Customer domain/site will have its own content and dynamic user controls which different from corporate but should be able to share customer KB. I know its doable after looking at the provider model explaination in your website with example of NBA sites. Also   I have seen it can be using grouping pages or multiple providers. Please explain in details and clearly with any code samples of different options available for us.

2. Is there any big core differences between current production version and  4.0 which is plan to comeout?  When is the ver 4.0 coming out officially?  We don't want to go thru the process of upgrade if its coming out soon.

3. Project manager is helpful to manage multiple sites and also with user controls.
4. Is there any comparison or difference list for current/old version to 4.0?

Hope to get some responses back soon.

Thanks
Vijai

Hello VIJAIANAND,

Thank you for using our services. Here are the answers:

1)  This is completely possible. The pages can now be grouped in different sitemaps, each hosted in the same or other database. You may have shared content. As for the user controls, you may control the whole configuration via the configuration policies. This way, you may have some of the controls in one instance, and other control for other domain/user/instance. Please check the developers manual for Configuration Policies and and Taxonomies/Sitemaps.

2) The two cores does not have anything in common - the architecture is entirely new. The official release is coming on October, while the beta - in several weeks. You may try to use a beta as a testing platform.

3) Could you please define managing of user controls? Do you want to deploy user control to a certain web site?

4) Not yet, but we will have such documents at the time of the official release. 


Kind regards,
Georgi
the Telerik team

Thanks for the reply Georgi.

So what I understand from your reply is,
1. SF 4.0 is totally a revamped, rebuilt version with lot of new stuff compared to older versions with totally different arch. We should be able to use beta version for testing and use the product when it gets out in Oct. Right?  I also heard you saying you will give instructions to upgrade to newer version which I guess is must for backward compatibilty.

2. In regard to my 3rd question, I was asking whether Project Manager would allow managing/editing user controls in the project using vb.net. Currently, I see it only supports .cs. I hope you will support vb.net as well.

3. What do you recommend with the current development? Do we continue to develop our controls and use different application instance currently and migrate to 4.0 or wait for few more weeks and migrate it and develop more? I know its our choice but I want to know your thoughts which would be easier on users.

Thanks for the help.

Hi VIJAIANAND,

I will put my answers after each of the questions.

1. SF 4.0 is totally a revamped, rebuilt version with lot of new stuff compared to older versions with totally different arch. We should be able to use beta version for testing and use the product when it gets out in Oct. Right?  I also heard you saying you will give instructions to upgrade to newer version which I guess is must for backward compatibilty.

Ok. We hope SF 4.0 will make our life easier on many things. So we will wait to get the beta version which I think is scheduled to release end of Jul. We are going to continue to develop user controls and test it out in current version. As per you answer, these controls should still be able to be consumed in SF 4.0.

Please email or communicate when the beta release is ready to use.

Thanks