¤ Composite UI Application Block ¤

mteric

Has anybody used the Microsoft patterns&practices' Composite UI Application Block?  Any real-world success stories?  Or disaster stories?

Recently, I have been experimenting with it to create a Windows data-driven application.  So far I've found it to be easy enough to work with.  The walk-throughs are very handy in getting up-to-speed.

Some observations: 1) the modular design is nice because you can plug different pieces of your application in and out of the main "shell" without rebuilding the world.  (You just modify an xml file to add or remove your module. Pretty simple.)  2) The modules are light-weight; the framework doesn't seem to bloat your code at all.  3) The "event broker" is handy for cross-module communication.

Nice features aside, all the Application Block really provides is structure. This is good, but it makes me wonder if it's really worth taking the effort to overcome the learning curve.  On the other hand, I haven't seen any major reasons not to use it.  Afterall, anything that simplifies the life of a developer is what it's all about.