DP Libraries FAQ

Please send me any questions, comments or criticisms you might have.

Why should I use the DP Libraries instead of [insert favorite framework]?

or: "...blah...Fusebox...blah...more mature...blah...blah...OnTap...blah...more sophisticated...blah...blah...MACH II...blah...blah..."

If you already have a favorite Framework then simply put, you shouldn't use the DP Library Application Framework as an application framework at all (although you might find pieces of it useful regardless). What I've done here simply won't compete with the many larger, more established frameworks. If you don't have a favorite already then by all means take a look at the DP Libraries, but I highly recommend that you also check out all the others first: they're popular for good reason. Choose the Framework that best fits your development style or organizational needs.

All that said if you do use another Framework please still take a look at the DP Libraries. Many of the applications and components can be plugged directly into other Frameworks. You can cherry-pick those features you need or like and ignore the rest. For example the DP Libraries Security Library could be easily integrated into a FuseBox application and a FuseBox application could easily be written to manage it.

Are the DP Libraries Open Source?

or: "blah...blah...M$ sucks!...blah...blah...penguins!...Windoze...blah...blah...blah...monopoly...blah."

Yes indeedy, it is. See the published Code Policy for all Depressed Press materials.

How do the DP Libraries perform?

or: "blah...requests per second...blah...blah...concurrent users...blah...blah...enterprise ready...blah...blah."

Honestly, I dunno. I've been perfectly happy with its performance on several sites, at least one of which gets significant traffic. I hope to do some actual, factual tests on this at some point, but have no definite plans at this time (I'd happily publish any results that come along however, good or bad).

That being said the DP Libraries definitely does inflict some overhead on the applications using it (as do all Frameworks or APIs). I've attempted to minimize that performance hit as much as possible but it needs to be clear that using the Libraries will create a slower application, in general, that not using them.

In almost all situations a solution tuned specifically to the situation will be faster than a generic solution. In exchange for that performance hit you gain the features of the library. The quality of that exchange is up to you to decide.