Alec Whittington

To the darkside

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 21:10:00 GMT

I realize it has been quite some time since I last posted anything. As with everyone else, I am extremely busy and have been for a long time.

What is the Darkside?

I bought a MacBook Pro. There. I said it! I feel dirty for saying it.

This is not a something that I under took lightly. I've been thinking about doing this for several years, but I really couldn't justify it until recently. A few months ago I unexpectedly parted ways with the company I'd been with for 3 years. This lead the opportunity of opening my own consulting business and to become my own boss. With this business comes a new attitude that makes me not want to be tied exclusively to the MS sandbox as I have for more than a decade. But you say that I did not need to abandon Windows, right? Correct, there are many Windows equivalents for Mac; Lamp development stacks, Ruby on Rails stacks, etc.

For me the decision came down to the fact that I wanted to be able to develop many different types of applications on many different types of platforms. By using the MBP, I am able to use those tools in their best of breed environments using quality hardware in a top notch product.

What makes the MBP so much better?

I just bought an Alienware M17x about 6 months ago. I knew it was going to be heavy, I also thought it would be top notch quality. Lets start with the fact it weighs 12 lbs, then mention the fact the power supply is at least 3 lbs. It runs super hot (on stock factory settings), it is load. It is also fast, powerful, and has great graphics. What it does not have is a quality fee to it. It just feels flimsy and plastic. But at the end of the day it was not what I needed, I could not run everything I wanted without hacks.

The MBP on the otherhand is

High performance
Light - 6.6 lbs
Light Power supply
Awesome graphics
Runs much cooler
Can run Windows via Bootcamp or VMs (I chose VMWare Fusion).
Made from a solid chunk of aluminum

Some of you at the point might be asking yourself why this is such a big deal, big enough for me to post it. Well simply put, I view Apple in the same light some people view Microsoft or Google. I got rid of my iPhone for an Android (now using a Samsung Note). My wife has the iPad, I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.

What this does not mean

I will not be jumping ship and abandoning MS or .NET. MS.NET is the core of what I do and the core of my consultancy. I will not become a mindless Apple fan-boy, don't we get enough mindlessness with Politics and Religion?

What did I get?

I ended up getting a 17" MacBook Pro.

2.5Ghz Intel core i7
8 GB RAM
750GB 7200RPM HDD
17", Anti-glare, UXGA

[Book Review] ASP.NET MVC 2 Cookbook

Sun, 08 May 2011 17:37:00 GMT

A short while back I was asked if I would be interested in reviewing Packt Publishing's ASP.NET MVC 2 Cookbook and since it was right up my alley, I accepted. So over the past 6 weeks or so, I've been reading the book as I've gotten a chance. While the book covers ASP.NET MVC 2, most of it is still quite relevant to MVC 3. If you have already gotten started with ASP.NET MVC, but are not a power user, this book is a must have in your collection. I've been using ASP.NET MVC since Guthrie first announced it and I learned a few tricks as well.

Review

It can be said that Cookbook formatted books are becoming more popular with readers, especially those already semi-familiar with a subject. I'm a fan of them also as I feel they cut out the basic bits that a true beginner would need and start off at an intermediate level. The book covers the following:

Working with Views
Working with Actions
Routing
Master Pages
Working with Data in your View
Forms
Simplification of Complex Applications
Validation
Data Access
Application, Session, Cookies, and Caching

What I liked about the book was the use of a Dependency Injection framework, in this case StructureMap, to help ease testibility. The authors were even careful to point out that they were using it for testibility, not to switch out implementation later. What I did not like was the heavy use of ViewData within the book. Personally I try to avoid the use of ViewData unless absolutely necessary, preferring to use Strongly Typed views instead. Another thing I would've liked to seen is the use of ViewModels and FormModels. ViewModels are used to send only the data needed to the view. This does not mean sending a fully populated object graph, only the pieces of the graph that are needed. FormModels are used to deliver the data back from the view. You use this to populate new entities, load and modify existing entities, and for Validation.

Hidden Gem

The hidden gem of this book is a little known project named NBuilder. I had not heard of this project until shortly before reading the book, thanks to a tweet from a friend. The book makes heavy use of NBuilder in it's samples, especially in mocking. If you are not using NBuilder in your current testing, I would highly suggest you take a look at it. It makes adding sample data extremely simple.

Overall I really liked the book and thinks it is worthy of a spot on your bookshelf if you are working with ASP.NET MVC. Hopefully the authors will update the book to reflect changes in MVC 3.

NuGet package for Sharp Architecture

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 21:54:00 GMT

One request we received when NuGet first came out (as NuPack) was for Sharp Architecture to release a package. We all agreed that this would be a good way to deliver updates in the future as it meant the end user did not have to download either the source or a template just to extract the assemblies.

Well the wait is over, today we released a NuGet package for Sharp Architecture 1.9.6. The package has the following dependencies:

Don't worry about all of those dependencies, when you install the package, you can choose to use the -IgnoreDependencies command-line argument to only reference SharpArchitecture.

You can find the project by using the package manager console:

And install it using the following command:

Once everything is installed, you will notice that a new folder has been created at the solution root of your Sharp Architecture folder structure.

This folder will contain the following packages in it:

I do have a couple of other packages installed, MvcScaffolding for one, so you will see some packages that are not referenced by Sharp Architecture. Please let us know if you have any problems with the package. It is very much a work in progress.

[Book Review] NHibernate 3.0 Cookbook

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 07:35:00 GMT

I was recently given the opportunity to review the latest NHibernate book, NHibernate 3.0 Cookbook by Jason Dentler. If you do any NHibernate development, you need to have this book in your collection. The content is well thought out as well as organized.

I started out with NHibernate in January 2008, kicking and screaming. Part of my issue was the use of XML everywhere, coupled with seemingly little to no documentation. Look at us now, oh have the times changed. We now have six books dedicated to nothing but NHibernate, as well as a very active mailing list. The latest book on NHibernate is NHibernate 3.0 Cookbook by Jason Dentler, published by Packt Publishing. The book includes 70 Recipes which generally build on previous recipes or earlier boiler-plate code.

Jason does a great job with explaining what the recipe is going to do, showing the code needed for the recipe, then explaining in detail what each piece is doing. This style of writing helps users of all skill level understand easily what is happening and gets new users up and running quickly. The book starts off with the basics, but as I later found out, if your an experienced NHibernate user, you should still read these chapters as code from them will be used in later recipes. You start by creating mappings with several different technologies, ranging from Nhibernate XML files to using ConfORM. Once you've mastered mapping, you are introduced to Configuration and Schema. This again is another chapter every user should read, no matter what your experience level is with NHibernate.

Chapters 3 through 8 cover the meat and potatoes of the NHibernate. They cover everything from Sessions and Transactions, Testing, Extending NHibernate, and using various NHibernate Contrib projects. One section I found particularly was that on Sharding Databases for performance.

I would recommend this book for NHibernate beginners as well as experienced NHibernate users. There is enough information in the book to thoroughly cover NHibernate across all experience levels and not feel like it was targeted at only one group or the other.

Sharp Architecture 1.9.6 Released

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 22:13:00 GMT

The S#arp Architecture team is proud to announce the release of version 1.9.6. This version is a maintenance release to address a few short comings of the 1.9.5 release. These include:

Added Component registration for the Default Session Key Provider to help with multi-tenancy
Addressed some bad references within the Templified solution
Updated MvcContrib dependencies to the official release (3.0.51.0)
Added missing *.debug.js files to *.Web/Scripts folder

If you've downloaded 1.9.5, please download this latest version instead. You can download the files from github: https://github.com/sharparchitecture/Sharp-Architecture/downloads
If you only need the binaries, you can download those from the location just mentioned.

Sharp Architecture 1.9.5 Released

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 03:58:00 GMT

The S#arp Architecture team is proud to announce the release of version 1.9.5. This version has had the following changes:

Upgraded to MVC 3 RTM
Solution upgraded to .NET 4
Implementation of IDependencyResolver provided, but not implemented

This marks the last scheduled release of 1.X for S#arp Architecture. The team is working hard to get the 2.0 release out the door and we hope to have a preview of that coming soon.

With regards to IDependencyResolver, we have provided an implementation, but have not implemented it in the MVC project. There is a fatal flaw with the IDependencyResolver that makes using it with Castle Windsor not recommended. This stems from the fact that while it implements a Create method, it does not implment a Release method. While the MVC teams states the dependency resolver with call Dispose on any object that implements IDisposable that it is tracking, it does not call this on any children of that object that might have been create also. This can lead to memory leaks and poor performance. While there are ways to program around this, we do not feel that it is worth HACKING a solution to a problem that should not exist in the first place. It is our sincere hope that the MVC team will address this issue in the near future, but given the fact they have know about it since MVC 3 Preview 1, we are not holding out breath. You can read more about the issue here and here.

To download the latest version, please get it from https://github.com/sharparchitecture/Sharp-Architecture/downloads.

Packtpub Microsoft Monday

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 15:08:00 GMT

Packtpub has released 6 new Microsoft books and is celebrating it with Microsoft Monday. Find out more details by going to https://www.packtpub.com/article/microsoft-books

Sharp Architecture 1.9 released

Sat, 18 Dec 2010 23:16:00 GMT

Sharp Architecture 1.9 has been released. This version upgrades Sharp Architecture to use the latest.... [Read More]

NHibernate 3.0 cookbook review

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 15:34:00 GMT

I was recently contacted by Packt Publishing in regards to reviewing their new NHibernate 3.0 cookbook written by Jason Dentler. Over the next few weeks I will begin reading and evaluating the book. My plan will be to make several posts about parts of the book as I get to them, along with one final post giving the overall review.

I would like to thank Likesh Bhambhwani for reaching out to me and extending this offer. I look forward to reading the book and learning about the great new features in NHibernate 3.0. As most of you have heard, the next version of S#arp Architecture will be based on NHibernate 3.0.

Sharp Architecture welcomes new team members

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 05:20:00 GMT

As with most open source projects, S#arp Architecture relies on its user base to for support, ideas, bug fixes, etc. We've been very fortunate to have a passionate user base that really fosters a sense of sharing. In the past few months 3 community members in particular have stepped up to help out with code, answering questions on the group and on StackOverflow, and documentation. We have decided to offer these gents positions on the S# team.

Please join us in welcoming Geoffrey Smith, Seif Attar, and Dan Smith to the S# team.

Geoffrey Smith

Geoffrey offered to help out with documentation and UI. He will be joining the main S#arp Architecture team and lending a hand with the 2.0 rewrite. One of his first tasks will be to spice up the Northwind sample. If you have ideas of items you would like to see in a Kitchen sink type sample, let him know. Geoffrey is relatively new to the .NET / C# world, coming from a Java / Python background. He most recently used S#arp Architecture and Lucene.net to index and search a large document repository. As a guilty pleasure, he enjoys working with the Arduino-based ArduPilot to create fully autonomous drones.

Seif Attar

Seif will be joining us in the role of the S#arp Architecture Contrib project lead. He has been developing software for 8 years, mainly using C#. Being a Linux user and free software advocate, he was very happy to find out about the Alt.Net movement as he could finally combine his work with his sense of community. He has been using S#arp Architecture and learning from its community since early 2009. He is active on the mailing list as well as StackOverflow.

Dan Smith

Dan is joining us on the S#arp Architecture Contrib team. He is currently the lead programmer for a medical device sales and training company in Connecticut. He uses S# day to day at work along with techniques he has learned from the WCHM project using AutoMapper and MEF.

Both Seif and Dan will be involved with the 2.0 rewrite on the Contrib as well as the main project. We know the community will join us in welcoming them

Sharp Architecture 2.0: How are we going to get there?

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 20:57:00 GMT

Now that we have published our 2.0 road map, several people have asked us how are we going to get there. Simple, one step at a time.

One step at a time

We have previously blogged about Templify (here and here) being the way we are going to deliver a S#arp Architecture solution. That was step one for us, so you could say that we are already starting to deliver 2.0. Our next steps will be as follows (subject to change)

Create an initial 2.0 release that includes (v1.7.X)
1. Convert solution and projects to Visual Studio 2010
2. Convert all projects to .NET 4.0
3. Reorganize the solution structure for the solution template (moving to a Who Can Help Me based folder structure)
4. Solution to use new MSBUILD based build system
5. Package for Templify
6. Document new Build process
7. Add documents for Templify
Create next release that includes (v1.8.X)
1. LINQ Specifications
2. Component composition
3. Component registration
4. Isolate NHibernate
Create the next release (v1.8.5.X)
1. Support for Castle 2.5
2. Support for NH 3.0 (whether it is a GA release or not)
3. Fluent NHiberate compiled against NH 3.0
4. Support for MVC 3
5. Change Validation (Data Annotations for UI, NHibernate.Validator for Model)
Create the next release (v1.9.X)
1. Convert Default Package to use Spark as its default view engine
2. Add documentation (blogs and wiki) on how to properly setup the Spark environment
3. Include the new Plugin architecture
4. Add documentation (blogs and wiki) on the new Plugin architecture
5. Support for NoRM / MongoDb
6. Support for Azure
Create the 2.0 release (v2.0.X)
1. Final bug fixes
2. Update all documentation
3. Add samples via Blog posts
4. Update Northwind
5. Update Who Can Help Me
6. Start creation of 3rd sample

All of this is subject to change based on the needs of the community / the team.

Conclusion

As you can see, we have an ambitious schedule a head of us. The team and I are really excited about what we have planned and cannot wait to share it with everyone. Some of it is very exciting, like the Plugin architecture and alternate data store support.

S#arp Architecture 1.6.5 will be the last stable release until 2.0 is released. The interim releases will all be listed as Alphas or Betas and should only be used in production if YOU are comfortable with it. If you are not or need to wait for a stable release, please wait for 2.0. For each release, we will also provide another Templify package. If you want the full source, you can download it from GitHub.

Using Templify to create a new S#arp Architecture solution

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 09:05:00 GMT

Last week Howard van Rooijen blogged about Templify. I am happy to announce that Templify is now the offical way to create a S#arp Architecture solution. Templify comes packaged with a S#arp Architecture package, so there is nothing you need to do, other than install Templify, to get it going. I'll leave the details on how to install and use Templify for Howard's post. This article assumes you have Templify installed already.

What about NuPack?

We've been asked several times about how Templify fits with NuPack and are we going to provide a package for NuPack delivery? Templify might appear to be similar to NuPack, but they solve different problems. NuPack is designed to managed assemblies at a project level. While it can work on a solution level, it really is meant for the project level. This might change in the future, but for now that is the way it goes. Templify is both a package creator and a package deployer. It can create a package from your existing project as well as deploy packages others provide you. With regards to creating a package for NuPack, this is something me might provide in the future, but it would be for updating assemblies, not the package. We've had our fill with Visual Studio templates and are really not keen on going back to their use.

Getting started with Templify

If you haven’t already done so, install the T4Toolbox from http://www.codeplex.com/t4toolbox. This enables Visual Studio with templating capabilities. (This is needed for the CRUD scaffolding generator.) Please note any incompatibilities noted within the section entitled "Installing and Configuring Prerequisites."
Optionally install the T4 Editor Community Edition from http://www.t4editor.net/downloads.html which will add basic coloring to the templates from within Visual Studio. Or use the free version of Tangible T4 Editor from http://t4-editor.tangible-engineering.com/T4-Editor-Visual-T4-Editing.html. It works for Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010.
You’re now ready to create your S#arp Architecture project:
1. Using Windows Explorer navigate to the directory you would like to create the solution folder in
2. Right click the folder and click "Templify Here"
  
  This will bring up the Templify UI.
3. Select the Template you would like to use, then enter the name of your solution.
4. Click the "Deploy Template" button and wait until you see the "Package Sucessfully Deployed" message appear.
5. Browse the new solution folder and you will see your new S#arp Architecture solution structure. Happy coding

To read more about S#arp Architecture's template and code Generation, please go here: http://wiki.sharparchitecture.net/VSTemplatesAndCodeGen.ashx.

S#arp Architecture 1.5.2 released

Sun, 09 May 2010 16:03:00 GMT

It has been a few weeks since S#arp Architecture 1.5 RTM has been released. While it was a major success a few issues were found that needed to be addressed. These mostly involved the Visual Studio templates.

What's new in S#arp Architecture 1.5.2?

Merged the SharpArch.* assemblies into a single assembly (SharpArch.dll)
Updated both VS 2008 and 2010 templates to reflect the use of the merged assembly
Updated SharpArch.build with custom script that allows the merging of the assemblies. Copys new merged assembly in to the root /bin folder.
Updated VS 2010 template to account for changes in T4 Toolbox. It is no longer neccessary to build the CrudScaffolding projects prior to their use.
Updated CRUD scaffolding (both normal and enterprise) to use Html.LabelFor, Html.TextBoxFor, and Html.ValidationMessageFor crud templates.
Updated Northwind sample to use merged assembly
Fixed issue with BuildUrlFromExpressionForAreas
Fixed issue with NHibernateSession.Init - it was possible to encounter a NullReferenceException.
Added new Build bat file. ClickToBuildAndMerge.bat will build the solution and then merge the assemblies into one.
Added Moq back to bin
Updated the VS templates to reflect the proper tools reference in the cs.proj files. VS 2008 is now 3.5 and VS 2010 is now 4.0.

You can find out more about S#arp Architecture on the wiki. You can also get your questions answered on the mailing list.

To download the latest, please go to http://github.com/codai/Sharp-Architecture/downloads.

S#arp Architecture 1.5 released

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 16:46:00 GMT

The past two weeks have been wonderful for me, spending 12 days on Oahu, Hawaii. Then followed up with the S#arp Architecture 1.5 release.

It has been a short 4 months since taking over as the project lead and this is my first major milestone. With this release, we advance S# even more forward with the ASP.NET MVC 2 enhancements.

What's is S#?
Pronounced "Sharp Architecture," this is a solid architectural foundation for rapidly building maintainable web applications leveraging the ASP.NET MVC framework with NHibernate. The primary advantage to be sought in using any architectural framework is to decrease the code one has to write while increasing the quality of the end product. A framework should enable developers to spend little time on infrastructure details while allowing them to focus their attentions on the domain and user experience. Accordingly, S#arp Architecture adheres to the following key principles:

Focused on Domain Driven Design
Loosely coupled
Preconfigured Infrastructure
Open Ended Presentation

The overall goal of this is to allow developers to worry less about application "plumbing" and to spend most of their time on adding value for the client by focusing on the business logic and developing a rich user experience.

Absolutely essential reading is Eric Evans’ Domain Driven Design.

For a quick introduction to the subject, see Domain Driven Design Quickly which is a concise summary of Evans’ classic work. Other useful background material, albeit dated, and http://www.codeproject.com/KB/architecture/NHibernateBestPractices.aspx. Although there are major infrastructural changes from the referenced article when compared to the current S#arp Architecture, the general structure is very similar and the background reading is helpful in understanding many of the ideas behind this development foundation.

S#arp Architecture and the NHibernate Best Practices article have been referenced in NHibernate in Action by Pierre Henri Kuate, Windows Developer Power Tools by James Avery and Pro LINQ Object Relational Mapping in C# 2008 by Vijay P. Mehta.

What's new in this version?

ASP.NET MVC 2 - this is the single biggest change. Internally there were not many changes to make use of MVC 2. The largest changes coming to the SharpModelBinder to use the new ModelBinder.
Visual Studio 2010 - included with this release are templates for Visual Studio 2010 targeted for the 3.5 framework
Areas - the baked in areas have now been updated to use the built-in area support
Nhibernate - updated to the latest GA assemblies, 2.1.2.4
Fluent NHibernate - updated to 1.0.0.636 built on NHibernate 2.1.2.4
MvcContrib - updated to 2.0.36.0
Castle project - updated to Castle.Core 1.2, Castle.DynamicProxy2 2.2, Castle.MicroKernel and Castle.Windsor 2.1
jQuery - updated to 1.4.2

Where can I get it?

There are 3 downloads. Two of which are templates only and the last one being the full source with the templates.

Visual Studio 2008 Template only - http://github.com/downloads/codai/Sharp-Architecture/SharpArchitecture_1.5_RTM_TemplateOnly.zip

Visual Studio 2010 Template only - http://github.com/downloads/codai/Sharp-Architecture/SharpArchitecture_1.5_RTM_VS2010_TemplateOnly.zip

Full Source and both Templates - http://github.com/downloads/codai/Sharp-Architecture/SharpArchitecture_1.5_RTM_FullSourceAndTemplates.zip

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to browse our google group, http://groups.google.com/group/sharp-architecture

S#arp Architecture 1.5 Beta 1 released

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 07:27:00 GMT

Well it is official, I just finished my first release for S#arp Architecture. While this is only a beta release, it does contain some big upgrades and we are hoping to get any bugs handled quickly so that we can get the RTM release completed. This will be a short post, with a more detailed posts coming in the next few days.

A big thanks goes out to Billy McCafferty, Michael Aird, Hoang Tang, and everyone else that had a say in this release.

Release notes

Built on top of ASP.NET MVC 2 RTM release
Use of built in areas to replace the original home grown ones
Updated ModelBinders
Jquery updated to 1.4.2
Addition of 'Enterprise' CRUD generation based on Application Services and CQS
Addition of Database project to go along with above
Updated NHibernate to 2.1.2.4
Updated Fluent NHibernate to 1.0.0.629
Updated Castle

Core - 1.2
Dynamic Proxy - 2.2
MicroKernel - 2.1
Windsor - 2.1

various bug fixes

As usual, the source code can be downloaded from our Github repository. Those looking for just the binaries can get them here.

This is a BETA release, there might be issues, so use at your own risk. It is stable, but is missing a few other bug fixes / enhancements. At this time there is no direct upgrade path. As the release becomes finalized, instructions will be posted.

S#arp Architecture in 2010

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 21:56:00 GMT

So it has been rather quiet on this blog for quite sometime. I could give you the same old excuses that others have, but in all honesty, I've just been really busy in life and my job.

2009 Recap

Started my employment with Six Sigma Systems
Asked my girlfriend to marry me (more on that later)
Bought a house
Watch my brother do another deployment to Iraq
Got married

So what does 2010 hold in store for me? Well simple...A ton more work. A little while ago, Billy McCafferty contacted me about my interest in becoming the development lead for S#arp Architecture. When this email came in, I was floored! Over the past year I have invested a lot of time into S#arp Architecture, using it both at work as well as on side projects and on personal sites. After thinking about it (and waiting for my wife to come home), I responded and let him know I was VERY interested in this opportunity. I am excited to say that I am now the development lead for S#arp Architecture and that Billy and I are wrapping up our latest release. Originally Billy and I had agreed that he would wrap up the Q1 release and I would officially take over with the Q2 release. This has since changed as the releases complimented each other and the timing was just perfect (plus I think Billy wanted to work with me a bit to make sure he was right in his choice of me :-) ).

Future of S#arp Architecture

Starting with this next release, S# will be based on ASP.NET MVC 2. The RTM is right around the corner and seems pretty stable so far. There are quite a few new features, with Model Validation and Areas being two big ones. We will make use to the baked in Areas rather than continue using our homegrown solution. We will however add some new extension methods for creating links to areas and default action links. This is due in part to the default way of creating an action link for an area:

<%= Html.ActionLink("Link Text", "ActionName", "ControllerName", new { area="MyArea" }, null) %>

I would like the syntax to be something like this:

<%= Html.ActionLink<ControllerName>(c => c.Action(), r => r.Areas.Area, "Link Text") %>

I'm not sure if this is possible, but we are gonna look into it.

Billy is also working on stuff, besides robotics, for the release. One of the big things is a better leveraging of the Application Services and CQS. You can read more about that in this post. If you aren't a member of the S#arp Architecture google group, I would recommend you do so. You can join at http://groups.google.com/group/sharp-architecture.

Now for the big announcement, S# will provide support for EF 4 in the future. After this release is completed and packaged, I will start work on this area. We will try to keep the breaking changes to a minimum, but I am not sure if that will be possible. With the use of EF 4, the number of dependencies will drop, the number of project templates will increase by 1, and hopefully the number of users will increase as well. Some of you might be worried by that last statement, but I can put your fears to rest. While we would like to increase the adoption of the project, hoping that it would become a default choice for people wanting to use MVC with a great framework, we have no plans on abandoning NHibernate in the future. As a matter of fact, support for this will grow as well. Billy and I both believe that adding EF 4 support, could help bring some others into our world of good design practices.

HornGet - Moving along

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:29:00 GMT

This morning, I read a blog post from Hadi Hariri about HornGet going server side. I am very glad to hear that they are now doing some of the packaging for you. Now I can uninstall some of the FUD I had to install for HornGet to work.

Original Post:

http://devlicio.us/blogs/hadi_hariri/archive/2009/11/23/getting-your-oss-binaries-with-horn.aspx

See it in Action:

http://hornget.net/packages/

New unit testing tools

Tue, 19 May 2009 15:30:00 GMT

This is a promotional post - but I do use Typemock Isolator and believe in this product.

Unit Testing ASP.NET? ASP.NET unit testing has never been this easy.

Typemock is launching a new product for ASP.NET developers – the ASP.NET Bundle - and for the launch will be giving out FREE licenses to bloggers and their readers.

The ASP.NET Bundle is the ultimate ASP.NET unit testing solution, and offers both Typemock Isolator, a unit test tool and Ivonna, the Isolator add-on for ASP.NET unit testing, for a bargain price.

Typemock Isolator is a leading .NET unit testing tool (C# and VB.NET) for many ‘hard to test’ technologies such as SharePoint, ASP.NET, MVC, WCF, WPF, Silverlight and more. Note that for unit testing Silverlight there is an open source Isolator add-on called SilverUnit.

The first 60 bloggers who will blog this text in their blog and tell us about it, will get a Free Isolator ASP.NET Bundle license (Typemock Isolator + Ivonna). If you post this in an ASP.NET dedicated blog, you'll get a license automatically (even if more than 60 submit) during the first week of this announcement.

Also 8 bloggers will get an additional 2 licenses (each) to give away to their readers / friends.

Go ahead, click the following link for more information on how to get your free license.

S#arp Architecture - Taking the hassle out of starting new projects

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:36:00 GMT

In March 2006 Billy McCafferty wrote an article on CodeProject about NHibernate best practices using ASP.NET. He took the time to discuss the advantages of using an O/RM with ASP.NET as well as information on Dependency Injection / Inversion of Control with Windsor. After a period of time, Billy created a new project on Codeplex (later moved to Google Code) that expanded upon those ideas and principals. This new project is named S#arp Architecture. From the S#arp Architecture home page:

"Pronounced "Sharp Architecture," this is a solid architectural foundation for rapidly building maintainable web applications leveraging the ASP.NET MVC framework with NHibernate. The primary advantage to be sought in using any architectural framework is to decrease the code one has to write while increasing the quality of the end product. A framework should enable developers to spend little time on infrastructure details while allowing them to focus their attentions on the domain and user experience. Accordingly, S#arp Architecture adheres to the following key principles:

Focused on Domain Driven Design

Loosely Coupled

Preconfigured Infrastructure

Open Ended Presentation

The overall goal of this is to allow developers to worry less about application "plumbing" and to spend most of their time on adding value for the client by focusing on the business logic and developing a rich user experience".

To help accomplish this S#arp Architecture has introduced a project template for Visual Studio 2008. This project template creates the solution, all of the projects, and just recently added a CRUD Scaffold generator. In addition the project template, S#arp Architecture uses ASP.NET MVC, Castle Windsor for Dependency Injection / Inversion of Control, NHibernate and Fluent NHibernate.

One of the things I appreciate the most is the time it saves when I am setting up a new project. I also like the flexibility it has. While the default presentation layer is ASP.NET MVC, this could easily be switched out to the presentation medium of your choice. If you choose to leave ASP.NET MVC, then you can use any of the View Engines available (Spark and nHaml are my choice). By default S#arp Architecture uses its own custom view engine so that you can use areas (see the documentation for the project). Thats right, I said AREAS!! The significance of this is the fact the Scott Guthrie recently announced that the RTM version of ASP.NET MVC will NOT ship with this built in.

If you currently use NHibernate and are sick of the XML mapping files, then you will love Fluent NHibernate. It makes mapping your domain objects so much easier. In case you have some tough mappings (in my case a composite key), you still have the option to use the XML mapping files. One of features there has been a lot of buzz about is the auto mapping. This little gem allows you to map your whole application in very few lines of code.

I would highly recommend S#arp Architecture to anyone that wants to make their life a little bit easier, while encouraging you to use best practices.

Meet my new friend...Balsamiq

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:55:00 GMT

Most people that know me understand the fact that I read a lot of blogs. Well earlier in the week, Oren (Ayende) posted about a tool he had found for making mock-ups. Well this is something I currently do frequently as I need to display mock-ups of new areas or changes to existing, so the post piqued my interest. After putting it off checking it out for a few days, I finally came to a new task that required mock-ups.

Meet

I did not use the desktop version yet, but am planning on doing so soon. This review will cover the trial version. There are no limitations on this version, but a timer will pop every five minutes encouraging you to purchase one of the paid versions. I highly recommend you do so, it is worth it.

First Impressions

First off I am not a designer, I would much rather write back-end code any day of the week. So needless to say, I do not like doing mock-ups. The interface is flashed base and very smooth. The elements you drop on the canvas have that hand drawn style about them, which I think is great. After all, most of us are not dealing with production mock-ups where every detail is finalized on the page. We are dealing with mock-ups to show other team members / bosses so that they understand your concept. Here is an example, just a simple page displaying a grid of users:

As you can see nice and easy, took 20 seconds. The same thing in word (using tables, ugh) or visio would have taken considerably longer. Now for a shot of the interface:

In just the hour or so I used it, it probably saved the company the cost of one license. You can find more information as well as the Trial at www.balsamiq.com. To go straight to some sample mockups, you can go here.