Punch (formerly Cocktail 2012) is an application development platform that takes the pain out of the development of data-driven rich XAML applications for Windows 8 Store, WPF, and Silverlight 5. Punch leverages established patterns and practices, such as MVVM, and builds on DevForce's rich data service capabilities.
MVVM stands for Model-View-ViewModel. It is an architectural pattern that originated from Microsoft and is based on the much older MVC pattern. MVVM is a way to structure how the the UI interacts with the domain model of an application. Recently, a number of popular MVVM frameworks have emerged, such as Prism, Caliburn Micro, and MVVM Light.
Despite having DevForce and the various MVVM frameworks, putting together all the pieces is still a challenge. Punch is an application development platform that brings DevForce and Caliburn Micro together, and provides an end-to-end foundation for building an application. Punch, along with the TempHire reference application demonstrate common patterns for medium to large scale line-of-business applications like MVVM, Unit of Work, repositories, sandboxing, and UI composition. The goal of the platform is to keep the noise out of the source code, so that you as a developer can focus on solving the actual business problems and not worry about the plumbing and wiring.