DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by Mike.Griffin

Lutz Reflector now owned by Red Gate

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:01:05 GMT

Lutz Reflector, the free .NET disassembler every developer developer should have, has been purchased by Red Gate software. Red Gate has stated they will continue to provide the tool for free.

A Serious Challenge for Open Source?

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 23:46:02 GMT

. . . what Mindscape has done is really quite impressive. To evaluate, accept, and incorporate feedback that quickly into the product and to have the installer ready that afternoon is impressive - for anyone.

Forgot that connection string?

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 04:16:03 GMT

Provides connection strings to many databases by many methods. An essential reference.

.NET 3.0 Partial Methods

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:16:03 GMT

No, not partial classes, partial methods. Read on if you did a double take like I did.

Using VistaDB Express with BlogEngine.NET 1.4

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:01:13 GMT

Now that the latest version of BlogEngine.NET is out, it is easier than ever to get your blog running with VistaDB Express. I've been using VistaDB Express with BlogEngine.NET for a little while now and just love it....

Showing some support for LINQ to SQL

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:16:02 GMT

Great article detailing why LINQ to SQL deserves some attention particularly if you buy into the object oriented style of development or are currently working with an ORM such as NHibernate.

Performance: IEnumerable<>.Sum

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:31:02 GMT

A article about the performance hit created by the IEnumerable<>.Sum extension method!!!

Sandcastle Removed From CodePlex

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 02:46:02 GMT

Sandcastle - the .Net community equivalent of RDoc/JavaDoc and the spiritual successor of the now defunct NDoc - has been removed from CodePlex. It's fate is currently up in the air and Microsoft is asking you for input on what should happen next.

Creating a great looking Gridview with filtering

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 13:29:53 GMT

Here is a quick tutorial to show you how to design a stylish Gridview with filtering enabled for some of the columns.

MySQL - We beg of thee, add a true "Guid" datatype to MySQL 6.0

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 02:01:02 GMT

Basically, the MySQL Connector/Net (5.2.2.0) provider treats BINARY(16) columns as Guids, though there is not real Guid (uniqueidentifier in Microsoft SQL) data type. However, it's not transparent, there are special read and write methods for it. If you're a MySQL fan let the folks over at MySQL know that you want a true data type for Guids and not an imposter. We appreciate the hard work the MySQL Connector/Net team is doing. After all, MySQL doesn't have a Guid type yet so they are doing what they can. However, we would rather see them lobby the core database engine team for a true Guid column type. How about you?

EntitySpaces 2008- LINQ to DataTable?

Sun, 25 May 2008 00:31:03 GMT

I have always built architectures on top of ADO.NET DataTables, they're fast (yes), flexible, and the power it provides is really pretty good. Additionally, as new features are added to ADO.NET they can then be easily absorbed. We were able to add LINQ to SQL to EntitySpaces by simply turning a LINQ query into an ADO.NET DataTable. Once we exchange the LINQ query for an ADO.NET DataTable the EntitySpaces architecture functions as normal since its underlying data structure is a DataTable. Pretty sweet. Here's a nice little trick in case you are not aware of it.

EntitySpaces and Silverlight Demo (Part 2)

Mon, 26 May 2008 17:01:02 GMT

Part One described the process of getting Silverlight to interact with a WCF web service, and showed how to bind EntitySpaces based data objects (WCF client proxies) to Silverlight controls, specifically a DataGrid control. While there were a lot of pages of review in Part One, it was mostly point-and-click "configuration coding", as MyGeneration, EntitySpaces, and Visual Studio did most of the work for us. But showing data in a grid isn't very exciting. It's time to look at some interaction with data and give EntitySpaces a little more credit than just a data wrapper.

Entity Framework: Our Albatross

Tue, 20 May 2008 12:31:04 GMT

ADO.NET Entity Framework. All I needed to know is that there are three different designer-generated XML files. But Dave Laribee rips it a new one here.

More on how Entity Framework's single-model goal is flawed

Tue, 20 May 2008 09:31:07 GMT

Greg takes point with the long-term goal of EF as defining the one true model can't possibly appropriate.

Frans Bourma comparing OR mappers to Entity Framework.

Tue, 20 May 2008 14:01:03 GMT

Frans Bourma details what an OR mapper is about and how that compares to Entity Framework.

ALT.NET

Mon, 12 May 2008 13:36:19 GMT

It turns out that I'm not some kind of a kook for thinking there's more to software development than MSDN. There's even a name for what I assumed should be standard practice for software developers: ALT.NET.

The Linq SelectMany Operator

Mon, 12 May 2008 16:16:02 GMT

A quick look at the SelectMany operator, what it does, and how you use it.

High peformance TCP server using completion ports

Wed, 07 May 2008 18:34:03 GMT

Completion ports were first introduced in Windows NT 4.0. This technology makes simultaneous asynchronous I/O possible and extremely effective. When building high performance network software one has to think of effective threading model. Having too many or too little server threads in the system can result in poor server performance

EntitySpaces and Silverlight Demo (Part 1)

Tue, 06 May 2008 14:46:03 GMT

I was asked to see how easy it would be to get EntitySpaces objects to work inside Silverlight, and to demonstrate my findings. This was a curiously interesting notion, since many have pondered whether Silverlight is a valuable runtime environment for LOB (line-of-business) applications. There are a number of reasons why Silverlight, at least in its Version2 flavor, would be very ideal for building client/server applications ...

EntitySpaces 2008 Beta II Available

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:16:03 GMT

The EntitySpaces 2008 Beta II is now available. The version number is 2008.0.0427.0 and is available for download now on our home page

MVC, TDD, ORM, WCF, OMG LOL

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:46:39 GMT

SubSonic, EntitySpaces, and a little humor ....

EntitySpaces - Juno Beach and LINQ to SQL

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:34:17 GMT

If you noticed that I wasn't around much on the forums this past week you weren't imagining things. I was on vacation in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. It's truly paradise on earth.

FAT .NET

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:28:31 GMT

The size of the .NET Framework has exploded from 22 MB for .NET 2.0, to 197 MB for .NET 3.5. If you tell your customers they must download a 200MB "framework from Microsoft" just to run your application, that's about all they need to turn to your competitors' solutions.

Success Oriented Architecture

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:31:05 GMT

Architecture can determine a project's success before the first line of code is written.

Expression Trees: Why LINQ to SQL is Better than NHibernate

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 07:31:02 GMT

The article claims that LINQ to SQL is inherently better than NHibernate because LINQ takes advantage of a new C# language feature called expression trees.