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[A New DevLife Post]

A while back, Pablo Castro had created a PopFly block from an Astoria service. It no longer seems to work, presumably because he created it with the preview bits, not the CTP bits.

I want to use a Popfly example in my upcoming DevConnections session Web Mashups with ADO.NET Data Services , so I decided to try to create one myself. It took a little hairpulling, but I've succeeded.

I created an ADO.NET DataService with an EDM as the source data. I used Northwind for my data model.

In order to create and test the block in Visual Studio 2008, I downloaded the Popfly Explorer plugin and built up a Northwind class that has a single exposed function of getCustomers.

SInce I'm just starting out with this, my popfly block merely returns some read-only data from the service. It's not interactive (i.e. you can't drill in to anything in the block) because that will require me needing to learn how to build a display block as well. So for the time being, it's just spitting out an array of objects that contain only two properties: CompanyName and Details which is just some aggregated data about the customer orders.

I had some problems with the SDK and had to work around them.

1) There is a getXML function but it wasn't returning anything. So I used the getText function instead then manually created an XML doc from the results.

    var root = "http://www.thedatafarm.com/dataservices/northwind/awdataservice.svc/Customers?$expand=Orders";
    var result = environment.getText(root);
    var doc=new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.DOMDocument.3.0");
    doc.loadXML(result);

2) Popfly's handling of javascript is not exactly the same as the results I was getting when testing in VS2008. Specifically with variable declarations. Declaring a variable and giving it a value in one line of code resulted in incorrect data when I ran the test in Popfly (even though it was perfectly fine during debugging in VS2008). THerefore I had to break up those code lines. It took me quite a lot of testing before I thought of this (I thought it had something to do with the use of toString and wasted some time going down that road).

        var orderCount;
        orderCount=orders.length;
        var orderTotal;
        orderTotal = 0;

I selected an existing block for displaying my data, the NewsReader, and wired it up to my block.

The last step was to define what will be displayed. There's a simple view:

but that only gets me to the objects, not the properties. So I had to go into the "advanced" view and modify the script, by adding ".CompanyName" and ".Details"  where the array was being called.

         var result = newsReader.addNewsItem(data["thedatafarmAstoriaNorthwind"][i].CompanyName,
                      "2/15/2008", data["thedatafarmAstoriaNorthwind"][i].Details,
                      "http://www.thedatafarm.com");

 

et voila!

So this was just a "can I even make it work?" test and now that I have gotten past it (and spent all of those extra hours dealing with the above mentioned anomalies, so you don't have to now...hopefully the next iteration of this beta SDK will make things a little easier), I'll continue exploring.

I have shared it and the name is "thedatafarmAstoriaNorthwind". I tagged it as "Data" so it should be under there.

An ADO.NET team project called Jasper was announced and demo'd at last year's MIX conference. I played with the available bits and wrote an article about it for O'Reilly: Build Dynamic Database Applications in .NET with Project Codename "Jasper"

Not much has been heard about Jasper since then, while the other incubator project that was announced at MIX has evolved into ADO.NET Data Services.

Jasper, in the meantime is stagnant and hasn't even been updated so that it can be used in VS2008.

In the Jasper forum, someone finally just came out with it and asked: "Is Jasper Dead?"

Andy Conrad replies:

We have no news about Project Jasper because we really have nothing interesting to report.

The project team wants to port the code base/ functionality over to the DLR, hence we are waiting for that to mature before doing so.  We are also thinking of doing a DLR based Astoria client with Jasper like functionality, but need to get Astoria V1 done.

As I have posted before, if folks want us to update the Jasper CTP for VS 2008 RTM or have any ideas of what direction we should go in, they should post to the newsgroup or send email. 

So it sounds like there was not enough interest expressed in the project and therefore it is just shelved for now.

As Holger Froebe suggests in reply to Andy's answer, if there was a VS2008 version for people to play with, more people would very likely be playing with it and help drive interest.

Dell started selling their own TabletPC recently. Since it looks comparable to my Lenovo Thinkpad, I took a closer look the specs and compared them. And the results are....[read more]

[A New DevLife Post]

Some of the best info about Entity Framework is buried in the forums.

I wanted to surface a few important things.

1) From Danny Simmons on January 28th responding to a question about RTM, while Danny is forced to repeat yet again "first half of 2008" he drops some great info about another build to play with before then:

"What I can tell you, though, is that there will be another beta/ctp before the final release.  Sadly I don't have a firm date for that yet either.  We'll let you know just as soon as we can."

2) From Noam Ben-Ami, who is the PM for the Tools, in response to a question about creating an EDM and then generating database objects from that:

"Despite our best efforts, this feature does not look like it will make the first release of the designer. We are working on this for a future release. In the meantime, we are looking for a way to release some sample code that will demonstrate this functionality and which you'll be able to modify for your own needs/database platform."

I mentioned the second point in my upcoming DotNetRocks interview, though I was having a hard time remembering which feature I had read this news about. My memory, it turns out, did serve me right although I was very hesitant for fear of misspeaking.

It would be great if this information were more readily available (poke poke), which is why I'm blogging it!

Earlier today I recorded a DotNetRocks show with Carl and Richard where  I got to go on and on and on about Entity Framework for a whole hour (which flew by in what felt like 10 minutes). Richard's heavy DBA background made for some really interesting questions.

One issue that really stands out is that a lot of dbas are aware of EF and LINQ to SQL and the fact that they do dynamic query generation. Many of them ,however, do not know that EF and LINQ to SQL can also be wired up to use stored procedures for DML and straight queries as well as views. Because of this, I have even been witness to SQL experts telling DBAs not to let their developers use EF or LINQ to SQL. Pablo Castro had a long talk with Greg Low who is a SQL guru (and MVP and RD and a reallllly nice guy and a very involved community leader that I originally met through INETA many years ago) and asked a lot of these questions on a recent podcast on SQL Down Under.

Clearly the message needs to be spread!

(Unlike the interesting and untrue LINQ to SQL rumor that was spreading this morning.)

The DotNetRocks show will "air" on Feb 26th.

Carl and I also talked about doing a series of EF "sessions" for dnrTV.

I can definitely relate to Dan's glee at learning that he would be interviewing Bill Gates for Channel 9.

From Technical Connection in Burlington:

Technical Connection has been retained to identify candidates for a junior to mid level  C# developer for long term employment.  A big part of this opportunity will be working with Sharepoint web portal development.  Salary and benefits are competitive and interviews are being scheduled now.  We encourage readers of your blog who are considering taking the next step in their career to contact us as soon as possible. 

A great video of a local fundrasier - over a thousand people jumping into the very icy Lake Champlain on a cold day

I haven't tried it out yet, but there's never an end to needing tools to help save your butt when you are trying to code XSLT. This one is from Microsoft's XML Tools team.

I have a few rules when I'm sick including no coffee, minimal caffeine, no sugar and no dairy. I had a bad chest cold for 3 weeks, and followed that rule pretty well. Now that I'm feeling better, I'm trying to see how long I can go without coffee. I still crave it but eventually that will go away too. So far I have survived!  The challenge will be tomorrow since our user group meeting is right across the road from a Starbucks! And of course, my fave is latte's (I blame Michele for turning me on to their Vanilla Lattes ;) which is coffee AND sugar AND dairy all together. I'd call that an addiction.

I can't say I have had no caffeine though since I am now drinking English Breakfast tea and plenty of Green Tea too.

I am, like to-oh-tally suscribed to the WebDevTools blog, dude! Here's why

[A New DevLife Post]

I seem to frequently point people to the technical story of MySpace as they went through the painful evolution that eventually led them to have a serious ASP.NET website to manage what is one of the highest traffic websites in the world. Even if it's not ASP.NET that you  choose, it's a good lesson in planning ahead. Read more...

[A New DevLife Post]

Jessica Fosler has a very funny YouTube video of a Sesame Street Cookie Monster clone interacting with a "totally indestructable" machine.

She also has some great WPF UI posts that I need to dig into ...

I'll be doing a DotNetRocks show with Carl and Richard about the Entity Framework. Danny Simmons was on DNR last April so it's definitely time for an update!

Now that the Team System's Unit Testing tools are built in to VS2008 Pro, many of us will finally get a chance to take a look at it.

Luckily I know some VSTS experts who aren't too far away and we have Sarah Cameron coming down from Montreal to teach us all about how to use the built-in Unit Testing in VS2008 on Monday. We have a bunch of NUnit users in the group and they are also curious about how the Microsoft version stacks up. Interestingly this session is drawing out a lot of people who have never been to a VTdotNET meeting before! Go Sarah!

Read more at www.vtdotnet.org!

Date: 02/11/08 Speaker: Sarah Cameron (InCycle Software ) -- Location: VT Tech, Williston Campus Topic: Unit Testing in Visual Studio 2008 VS2008 Pro now includes the Unit Testing features that were previously only available in the VSTS sku. Sarah Cameron, a Visual Studio Team System expert from InCycle Software (www.incyclesoftware.com), will demonstrate how to use and really benefit from Unit Testing in VS2008 using this built in tool.. Speaker Bio: Sarah Cameron is a consultant specializing in Visual Studio Team System, with experience on projects from inception to delivery following well-defined software processes. Sarah has been working as a consultant for Incycle Software (www.incyclesoftware.com) a Montreal based firm specializing in Team System consulting services. She has been assisting ISVs and larger corporations successfully plan and deploy Visual Studio Team System. She may be contacted at sarah.cameron@incyclesoftware.com

From Mad River's website this morning:

POWDER CENTRAL at Mad River Glen today as we picked up a solid 12" overnight. This on top of the 8-10" yesterday, on top of the 4-6" from the day before that so we will be approaching EPIC skiing conditions today on Gen. Stark Mountain. I was no math major but I think that like 2 feet in the past 3 days! It continues to dump snow vigorously and the best part is it should continue to do so all day with well over a foot total expected. Actually the best part really is that yet another big storm is winding up to wallop us again this weekend

So after a lifetime of learning how to ski on hard packed snow and ice (we're talking eastern skiing), I'm now having to learn how to ski in real powder. My skis are too skinny, that's for sure. But if I find powder that is a little fluffier, I'm turning like a champ. If it's too heavy I unexpectedly revert to the snowplow I learned when I was 6 years old.Well, at least it's a really soft landing when you fall. When my ego and my energy level fail me, I can always fall back on that old excuse: "ummm, I have to go home and get back to work!"

From TEKsystems 

These jobs are getting listed on thingamajob.com, but not all of them seem to be there yet. Here's a direct link to TEKsystem's listings.

Title                 Software Developer

Location:         Stowe

Number of openings:  3

Responsibilities: 

Software Developers provide the technical expertise to create enhancements, code corrections, and new functionality.   Software Developers fulfill both the support and development programming roles and work in teams with other developers, support, QA and management when appropriate.

Requirements

·      Minimum of 3 years experience developing and supporting software applications in a Windows environment.

·      Four year college degree or equivalent experience – Bachelor’s degree desired.

·      Able to learn and master new technology quickly and improve personal performance through continual self-study.

·      Desire to provide outstanding products and customer service.

·      Able to work on multiple projects simultaneously and to cope with diversity and complexity in a high-pressure, rapidly changing environment.

·      Strong interpersonal and team relationship skills and able to work well individually or as part of a team.

·      Demonstrated understanding of the following: Windows 2000, XP, and 2003 Server in conjunction with software development.

·      Experience utilizing one or more of the following:  SQL Server 2000/2005, .NET.

·      Ability to maintain high degree of confidentiality concerning development products.

·      Detailed knowledge of one or more SMS software products helpful (i.e., two or more years of installation, product management, or systems support experience) or able to thoroughly learn SMS software products.

·      Demonstrated technical writing ability and basic email skills.

·      Extremely detail oriented and dedicated to follow-through in all work with a focus on project quality, completeness, and thoroughness.

Title                 Senior Software Developer

Location:         Stowe

Number of openings:   2

Responsibilities: 

Senior Software Developers provide the technical expertise and leadership to create technical architectures and designs, enhancements, code corrections, and new functionality.   Senior Software Developers fulfill both the support and development programming roles and work in teams with other developers, support, QA and management when appropriate.

Requirements

·      Minimum of 5-7 years experience developing and supporting web based applications in a Windows environment.

·      Four year college degree or equivalent experience – Bachelor’s degree desired.

·      Able to learn and master new technology quickly and improve personal performance through continual self-study.

·      Desire to provide outstanding products and customer service.

·      Able to work on multiple projects simultaneously and to cope with diversity and complexity in a high-pressure, rapidly changing environment.

·      Strong interpersonal and team relationship skills and able to work well individually or as part of a team.

·      Demonstrated understanding of the following: Windows 2000, XP, and 2003 Server in conjunction with software development.

·      Experience utilizing one or more of the following: SQL Server 2000/2005, .NET.

·      Ability to maintain high degree of confidentiality concerning development products.

·      Detailed knowledge of one or more SMS software products helpful (i.e., two or more years of installation, product management, or systems support experience) or able to thoroughly learn SMS software products.

·      Demonstrated technical writing ability and basic email skills.

·      Extremely detail oriented and dedicated to follow-through in all work with a focus on project quality, completeness, and thoroughness.

Contact

      Alicia Ferraro

One of the drawbacks with the partial postbacks in AJAX is that you can't go forward or back in your web browser to different states of the page created by the partial postbacks. Nor can you create a shortcut to one of the views.

The ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions has functionality in there to enable these scenarios. It's pretty simple to pull off thanks to the new tools.

Jonathan Carter has a great post on how to use this. It's just #1 of more to come so keep tuned. Jonathan is a new to Microsoft's Visual Studio Developer Platform and Evangelism team with the dream job of writing and speaking about all the cool things you can do in VS. You can tell by his post that he will be a great resource for us to learn new features.