The document discusses the history and development of Xamarin, a framework for building native mobile applications using C#. It details its origins from the Mono project, key milestones in its evolution, and the advantages of using Xamarin for enterprise mobile app development, including code sharing across platforms and performance benefits. The document also outlines pros and cons of using Xamarin, tips for developers, and mentions a skunkworks project involving Azure mobile services.

1. Enterprise Mobile Apps
Xamarin and C#
We Love
This Stuff

2. About Us (http://www.ostusa.com/app-dev)
• Brian Anderson
• Founder of OST’s app dev practice / Business Dev
• Crowe -> SageStone -> NuSoft -> OST
• Nick Westbrook
• Sr. Consultant (worked on ArtPrize 1.0)
• … -> Spout -> Family Christian -> OST
• Mike Perry
• Sr. Consultant
• NuSoft -> Amway -> KPMG -> OST
• Alex Jantz
• Consultant
• Belcan (Aerospace dev and EE) -> OST

3. Xamarin History (via Wikipedia)
• In June 2000, Microsoft first announced their .NET Framework.[4] Miguel de Icaza of Ximian began investigating
whether a Linux version was feasible.[5] The Mono open source project was launched on July 19, 2001. Ximian was
bought by Novell on August 4, 2003.
• After the acquisition of Novell by Attachmate in April 2011, Attachmate announced hundreds of layoffs for the Novell
workforce, including Mono developers,[6]putting the future of Mono in question.[7][8]
• On May 16, 2011, Miguel De Icaza announced on his blog that Mono would be developed and supported by
Xamarin, which planned to release a new suite of mobile products. According to De Icaza, at least part of the original
Mono team had moved to the new company.[9]
• After this announcement, the future of the project was questioned, since MonoTouch and Mono for Android would now
be in direct competition with the existing commercial offerings owned by Attachmate, and considering that the Xamarin
team would have difficulty proving that they had not used technologies previously developed when they were employed
by Novell for the same work.[10][11]
• In July 2011, however, Novell, now a subsidiary of Attachmate, and Xamarin announced that Novell had granted a
perpetual license for Mono, MonoTouch and Mono for Android to Xamarin, which formally and legally took official
stewardship of the project.[12][13]
• In December 2012, Xamarin released Xamarin.Mac,[14] a plugin for the existing MonoDevelop Integrated development
environment (IDE), allowing developers to build C#-based applications for the Apple OS X operating system and
package them for publishing via the Apple App Store.
• In February 2013, Xamarin announced the release of Xamarin 2.0.[15] The release included two main
components: Xamarin Studio, which bundled Xamarin's previous, separate iOS, Android and Apple OS X development
tools into a single application;[16] and integration with Visual Studio, Microsoft's IDE for the .NET Framework, allowing
Visual Studio to be used for creating applications for iOS and Android, as well as for Windows.

4. Xamarin Framework History
•Mono
• C# + .NET implementation for Linux
• started in 2001/released 2004 (C# 1.0)
•MonoTouch (for iOS) – 2009 (iPhone OS 3.0, pre-ipad)
•Mono for Android – 2011 (Android 2.3 Gingerbread)
•MonoDevelop IDE
•MonoMac open source project

5. Why Xamarin?
• Apps are native, performance is native
• Entire platform SDK available to your code:
• iOS: StoreKit, EventKit, iCloud, etc
• Android: Play Services, Compatibility Library, etc
• Share C# across Xamarin, Windows & WinPhone apps
• Leverage platform-specific libraries:
• iOS: Objective-C
• Android: Java

6. Why does this matter?
1. User experience
2. Performance
3. Features
We don’t believe that HTML5 apps
give a truly native experience
•Proof = Facebook Apps

7. How does it work?

8. How does it work?

9. Xamarin Development Environments

10. iOS apps in Visual Studio

11. Demo
Xamarin Studio (Mac & Windows), Visual Studio, Debugging, Storyboards

12. Enterprise Mobile Apps

13. Real Enterprise Project Experience
• Project description
• Starting with iPhone
• Building on top of large infrastructure with existing RESTful API and
a common domain library
• Leveraging an enterprise Onion Architecture
• Domain driven design
• Domain services
• App services
• UI per platform
• Defined infrastructure layers for communication and data abstraction
• Dependency Injection
• ORM with Linq support
• Repository patterns
• We wanted to leverage components (ie Charts & more) to save time
and $

14. Demo
How are we architecting it? Where are we at in the dev cycle?

15. Pro / Cons
Pros
• C# - makes for fast coding of
back-end patterns
• Lots of shared code cross-
platform
• Clean IDE, easy to pick up
and run with
Cons
• New platform
• Still gaining support for things like
AutoMapper, Ninject, and PCL’s
• SVN add-in needs work (or
remove it completely. We really
need this project to migrate to Git
anyway.)
• Poor Storyboard stability when
used with SVN
• File linking in the presentation
layers can be a pain

16. Tips
• If using SVN: Use Xcode to install the Command Line Tools (if
not already installed) and use Terminal to run SVN commands.
• You can create XIB (nib) files for complex views and avoid using
the Storyboard
• Expect a learning curve if you haven’t worked with iOS view
controllers before

17. Something Fun

18. Skunk works
• Azure Mobile Services
• Android / iOS with shared core
• Including communication with on premise Web API
• Custom microcontroller designed using ElectricImp.com
• A stop light
Let the final demo begin…

19. How it works

20. Circuit

21. Questions / Thoughts