Tuesday, July 22, 2008
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I can't remember if this has been around before, I do vaguely remember seeing something like it.
However, I just wanted to apply a snippet of code I found on Paul's blog the other day to NHibernate. Of course we will definitely have type safety in queries when Linq-to-NHibernate is completed. But surely linq-to-nhibernate is not going to be the _only_ way of writing queries.
Using the original code snippet 'as is' would look something like this:
ICriteria c = session.CreateCriteria(typeof(Person));
c.Add(Restrictions.Eq(Property.GetFor(() => new Person().FirstName), "John"));
This is ok, but a little long winded, so I implemented another class called RestrictBy which can break down a simple lambda expression. So now I can use:
ICriteria c = session.CreateCriteria(typeof(Person));
c.Add(RestrictBy.Eq(() => new Person().FirstName == "John" ));
c.UniqueResult();
This also means you'll get compile time errors for incompatible types such as:
Using the lambda expression we get to evaluate the _actual_ property and that property's type. If you wanted to clean this up some more, its not hard to then go and add some extension methods to ICriteria to produce:
ICriteria c = session.CreateCriteria(typeof(Person));
c.AddEq(() => new Person().FirstName == "John");
c.UniqueResult();
So that's it, a simple example at the moment, but it might be an option to look into a little more because the ICriteria interface is still NHibernate's native querying interface and still provides a lot of power, flexibility and programmatic building of queries.
Sourcecode:
Thursday, July 17, 2008
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MindManager is a very slick product, it looks and feel like every other Office application. I've used this product for a few university project management assignments to create things such as work breakdown structures (WBS) as well as just general information organisation.
The version I'm using is the Lite version (heaps cheaper) which still carries a lot of features but lacks the integration to other office products. It also lacks the additional information you are able to attribute to the topic nodes such as start, finish dates, time estimates and resources. Although these would also be nice to have from a project point of view, I guess I can live without doing it directly in MindManager as they sound a lot more like scheduling tasks to me. Which is where MS Project Integration would be awesome.
To bridge this gap for the Lite version I've decided to write a plug-in for Microsoft Project to import the information directly out of MindManager.
Then viola, you can even use the relationship links between the nodes to create task predecessors automatically. As much as I've enjoyed using Mind Manager, re-entering this task information would be a real negative to actually using it productively. So you should be able to use this little plug-in if you're unsure you want to spend the additional $250US right away but still want some form of Project Integration. Oh and its only one way, no pushing information back.
The plug-in can be downloaded here, should work with both MindManager Lite and Pro. Of course, this is a free util, no warrenty or support.
[Download]
Friday, March 28, 2008
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NHibernate is a remarkable ORM, however with all the magic comes a few caveats, these being the difficulties running NHibernate apps in a shared hosting environment. I'm still convinced that it's entirely possible, so I've decided to start compiling a list of success and failures that others (and myself) have had in getting things working.
Compatible Shared Hosts
| Host Name |
Comment |
Reference |
| Webhost4life |
Reportedly works with "no hacks" |
[ref] |
| DiscountAsp |
I think this should work with IIS7 / Win 2008 |
[ref] |
| XHostSolutions |
Simply email support and ask to have your application run as Full Trust
|
This is the host I use.
|
Shared Hosts known not to work
Untested / Unknown
Useful References / Alternate Ideas
Thursday, February 21, 2008
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There are a fair few CMS solutions floating around in .NET at the moment, a good general comparison tool can be found at CmsMatrix.org.
Cuyahoga
In the past, the Cuyahoga Website Framework has looked always fairly interesting, it is also built on NHibernate which to me is a plus. Most things I've done with NHibernate have generally "just worked", maybe it's because NHibernate development is pounded with unit tests, whatever it is, it works.
I haven't had any experience developing any extensions for Cuyahoga, so I don't know exactly how extensible it is yet. In terms of usability, I did find the interface a little confusing at first. The admin section is only used to configure modules/pages..etc.. but to actually edit the content I needed to visit the actual page in admin mode and click edit module (DNN Style).
Graffiti
Graffiti CMS has only recently come to my attention. I remember only in the later half of last year reading about Telligent acquiring Dozing Dogs CMS and wondering at the time, what they were going to do with it, well, now days, there is no sign of Dozing Dogs. Instead, earlier this week Telligent released Graffiti CMS which appears to be completely new as a full version 1.0.
Graffiti supports a variety of databases including VistaDB (default), MS Sql and MySql. Not only that, but they claim its mono-compatible, so it is able to be run on linux and other mono supported platforms.
Test Run of Graffiti
Setup was really simple, xcopy, run. With not much more thought then that, your away.
The dashboard of Graffiti looks fantastic. I've always been a fan of having an area dedicated to admin tasks, as opposed to having admin controls stuffed into a site's design, as done by DNN. The only thing that wasn't obvious in Graffiti is the fact that there are no "pages". All content appears to be considered a "post". The "posts" are configurable in a way that is easy to set them up in a blog style behavior, or leave them detached, essentially making them pages.
Some of the highlights that stood out to me immediately
- Seems to use NVelocity templates to render out HTML, meaning it's lean and clean
- Supports a programmable API -- MetaWeblog
- Supports its own extensibility though Widgets
- Widgets can be installed in literally 2 clicks
- Admin dashboard is slick
- Free express version
Again, from observation, there are a couple of cons too
- "Posts" appear to be rendered out into files on the disk, (like MovableType) this certainly got people that owned large blogs into trouble.
I did get the feeling that I'd seen an admin area that looked similar...Graffiti even has fading panels at the top of the screen when you make a change...
In any case, Graffiti seems like something that should be watched in future. It may already be a great solution for a small - medium site. I do think that a site with a lot of pages may become a little unwieldy in the current interface, especially if changes need to be made across many pages, or you want to switch to a new theme.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
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The ADO.NET team blog have posted about a number of vendors who are currently working on Linq-to-sql providers for other databases, some of these include Oracle, Informix, Ingres, Sybase, MySQL, PostgreSQL, DB2, Progress and Microsoft SQL Server databases.
I won't be getting too excited as most of these more due to come within 3 months of the official VS2008 release. Come to think of it, I think this is when most vendors are planning to release new versions, including other cool plug-ins like Resharper.
Every since using NHibernate, the effort required to use Many-to-many and one-to-many joins in business objects is a brainless exercise. When using a lazy loaded property on a business object, it just works, however, what happens when you try to bind this property using an ObjectDataSource hooked up to gridview or formview in asp.net...
As seen above, the GridView works out that it's out of it's depth with all the complex properties and only defines the simple text/int/boolean columns. The only alternative for the complex properties is to define your own template columns.
To display the value of a complex property you are still able to access the sub-properties using the Eval() command. So in the example below, I can use Eval() to display the name of the 'parent location' that is currently selected. To actually select the location, I can bind it the a custom user control using the Bind() method, this will pass in the entire lazy loaded 'Location' object. The user control must then pass back out a Location object when the ObjectDataSource needs to do an update.
After making this change my grid now has the lazy loaded 'Parent Location' property:
When the grid is in action, view mode:
Edit mode:
Although this is a relatively simple example, it does show how much code you don't need to write to do a one-to-many join using binding in asp.net 2.0.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
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As far as I'm aware ASP.NET doesn't support IDataErrorInfo, I've asked about this in many places, including Tech.Ed '07 with no success. The closest things I've seen in terms of Business Object level validation is from Enterprise Library validation block (which is attribute based and can render out with custom EntLib web controls) and another example in the Futures Dynamic Data Controls using Linq (I have no idea how this magic validation magically appears).
It all just seems overly complicated, so, have a look at the IDataErrorInfo interface the methods are:
string this [ string columnName ] { get; }
string Error { get; }
Simple and generic. I've been playing around with an idea about how to get this into a generic web control, introducing:
WebValidationControlExtender
Here is an example of the control in design mode:
Here is an example of the control in action using an ObjectDataSource and a plain old DetailsView:
Here's what's going on under the hood.
All you need to do is tell WebValidationControlExtender what ObjectDataSource to hook in to.
When the page is executing and the user tries to insert a record, the DetailsView control builds up an object and sends it into the ObjectDataSource.
WebValidationControlExtender is already listening for Insert and Update events, all it does is check if the object being passed through implements IDataErrorInfo.
If it does, WebValidationControlExtender interrogates the object's columns/properties for errors.
If errors are found, it adds CustomValidators back to the page then goes searching for controls that are using that object datasource (in this case the DetailsView).
When it finds the details view it searches for BoundFields that are bound to the properties with the error, then inserts the red * like in the picture above.
The point is, you could go an implement whatever validation library suites your needs, as long as the object implements IDataErrorInfo the validation works. I just don't understand why ASP.NET doesn't already use something like this, there are so many complicated implementations for validation, I hope this brings some fresh light.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
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Over the past few days I've decided to start recording my time with an open source program called Kimai. I'd have to say, I'm not liking the results to far. Kimai has recorded that I've spent 24 hours at work over the last 48 hours. Now, I do realize that other people are working even LONGER hours than me, I personally feel they are crazy, they are the ones that should be hooking up Kimai, and they probably wouldn't even have to bother going and turning the recorder off. All the hours have come about because of the looming deadline of a major project, so it'll be also interesting to see what normal working hours look like, when they return.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
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I just couldn't resist sharing the news with all those who have been burned with the Netgear SC101 network storage device. Call it what you like NAS, SAN, Hard drive with blue cable plugged in, doorstop, whatever. Netgear has finally after a few delays (6+ months), released a Vista driver, which, yey, I can verify works on my Vista Business Edition. I still haven't had any luck with getting it installed on Windows Server 2008 (errors with "Failed to install the Z-SAN SCSI miniport driver" whatever that is), but hey, 1 out of 2 ain't bad.
So if you're one of the people who upgraded to Vista and had to put your SC101 back in the box for a few months, head on over to the support page and grab the latest driver attempt. Good luck.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
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I've mentioned previously, there has been some experimentation around with getting WebKit to work on windows. I just didn't really expect Apple to release a full Safari for Windows. So naturally owning a MacBook that I use to run both OSX and Windows, I downloaded both versions. Although the Windows version gives you a taste, it just doesn't 'feel right'. Not sure what it is, but Safari just seems so much smoother in it's native OSX. I'm sure future versions will improve on this, but wow, cool.
Another feature of Leopard that I'm pretty impressed with is the ability to have 'Piles' or 'Stacks' of icons and files. This is not entirely a new idea, but I'm not aware of a decent usable implementation that has full integration into a consumer desktop. Knowing Apple, it's probably pretty smooth with all the appropriate transition effects and bling.