Xtensive – News Blog

Big Winter Sale

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 09:58:00 +0000

We are glad to announce that Big Winter Sale is starting on the 1st of December and will last till the end of the year. During this time you get 50% off any edition of DataObjects.Net and Help Server. To apply this 50% special to your order, just enter DEC2011PROMO coupon code at the shopping cart or product checkout page.

Should you have any questions, please email to sales@x-tensive.com.

Sincerely,
Xtensive.com Sales Team

We've launched 9facts.com

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 13:19:00 +0000

I'm happy to announce the launch of alpha version of 9facts.com - a new and pretty risky project I started nearly 6 months ago (see my blog post about this). 9facts is a social service for sharing and comparing facts related to you, your friends, and people you know.

Xtensive was involved in its creation as co-investor, together with Leonid Volkov.

Home page of 9facts.com displays the topmost
achievements in your country, city,
and groups you're in, including your friends' group.

The service is focused on local fact rankings: nearly any group of people there has its own fact ranking (top facts). This feature allow users to compare and highlight their own skills in a group of people they belong to (city, country, college, school, company, etc.). On contrary, most of rankings available on the web are global, so 9facts is designed to change this.

Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside. Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.
– Bob Wells

The problems we're trying to address:

There is no single place on the web, where you can compare yourself with other people by the whole set of metrics that are relevant to you. We are talking about nearly any metrics - e.g. your birth date, height, the number of hours you spent at work during this month, the highest place you've ever visited, the deepest dive you've made, the number of miles you run this week, your reputation on Stack Overflow and so on.
Most of the ratings on the web are global, but local ratings seem more important in our life. E.g. what a reputation on Stack Overflow says about a person in general? Almost nothing. But being compared with reputation among developers in his city or in his company it becomes more meaningful. The same can be stated about nearly any metric: almost no one remembers his position in global rating on Stack Overflow, but you'd definitely remember you're #1 (#2, #3) on Stack Overflow in your city or company.
If we're able to compare an arbitrary set of such metrics for arbitrary groups of people in real time (e.g. your productivity measured by RescueTime + the number of LOCs you committed + the number of tasks closed in issue tracker), we bring Google Analytics to the world of achievements and productivity of people. This must be a precious tool for business and it is attractive for people as well, since they can identify and highlight their local or global successes (e.g. attach them to a CV). Moreover, people will use such a tool to compare and fix achievements of their kids.
If we're able to fix nearly any facts, we can identify the most popular facts in a particular group of people. And this set of facts nicely describes what's common for this group. E.g. if it's a group of bodybuilders, most of them publish the weight they push, muscle size, etc.; if it's a group of developers, they compare their reputation on Stack Overflow, number of committed lines of code, lists of technologies they use, etc. Travelers might count the number of countries they visited, driving fans - the horsepower of their cars, and so on. Imagine, you're visiting some event and instantly see the most popular activities and achievements for the whole group of people there. IMO, that's cool!

So that's what 9facts should finally evolve to: a tool allowing you to share and compare arbitrary (but mainly measurable) facts about your own and about other people. Currently we're just in the beginning - "About 9facts" page describes the current state of the project. The limitations it has now include:

Absence of an API allowing third-party apps to push facts with measurable data to it, although there are few integrated data providers grabbing some facts from Facebook, Twitter, Stack Overflow and RescueTime. Also, you can enter the facts manually there - our presentation explains what's so unique in this part.
Logging of facts with data sequences (i.e. data change charts) is not yet implemented.
Some of essential social features aren't added yet - e.g. there is no messages, notifications about your high positions in tops and so on.
UI/UX certainly needs to be improved as well - some actions and implied results there are far from being obvious.

The good news is that the service already works, and you already can compare yourself with the people nearby you (or in your city, country and so on). This can be done in 3 simple steps:

Register or sign in to 9facts
Specify your city or country in account settings - otherwise you facts won't appear in city / country tops.
Enable one or more fact providers and try to add some facts about you manually. If you don't know what to add, look up the biggest top to get some ideas (remember, there is "Add fact like this" action in context menu of any fact).

We'd highly appreciate if you share your impression with us by sending an email to info@9facts.com or leave a feature request @ UserVoice.

What makes 9facts attractive for developers right now, and why we announce it here? 9facts allows you to create a single page containing the most important information about you, and a significant part of this information can be gathered and updated automatically:

The time you spend working, as well as your productivity measured by RescueTime
Your reputation on Stack Overflow
The number of recommendations on LinkedIn you have
Upcoming: your VCS statistics, the list of technologies and tools you're actually using, etc. - as you may find, software developers is one of groups we'd like to attract first.

So 9facts allows you to create your online profile showing how you're compared with other people by each metric that is relevant to you. Also, it's a nice way to know something new about people around you - e.g. you can find out who in your city has the largest number of friends on Facebook (enable Facebook fact provider), or made the highest parachute jump (add this fact). Take a look at top facts for "Yekaterinburg" keyword to get the imagination of this.

9facts already won a competition for being presented to Steve Blank at Start-up Rocket - we were among 8 Russian startups selected by PwC, StartupPoint and i-Accelerator for this event. More information about our progress can be found in 9facts blog.

Christmas Sale

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 18:01:00 +0000

We are glad to announce that Xtensive.com Christmas Sale has started today, December 15 and will last till the end of the year. During this time you get 20% off any edition of DataObjects.Net and Help Server. To apply this 20% Christmas special to your order, just enter the following coupon code at the shopping cart or product checkout page: DEC2010PROMO

Should you have any questions, please email to sales@x-tensive.com

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Sincerely,
Xtensive.com Sales Team

Users from Russia and CIS countries, apply for discounts!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 27 May 2010 13:45:00 +0000

Если вы, или компания, в которой вы работаете, находитесь в России или странах СНГ, сейчас - наилучшее время для приобретения наших продуктов. Для получения значительной скидки на один из них отправьте нам e-mail с информацией, позволяющей нам определить ваш аккунт на x-tensive.com, а так же наименования продуктов, которые вам интересны.

Предложение актуально до 15 июля 2010 г.

In English:

If you (or a company you work for) are from Russia or one of CIS countries, it's a perfect time to purchase our products. Apply for a discount by sending us e-mail allowing to identity your account at x-tensive.com and list products you are planning to purchase to gain a significant discount.

The proposal remains intact till July 15th, 2010.

Free licenses for DataObjects.Net and Help Server for bloggers, article writers and user group speakers

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:39:00 +0000

We offer free licenses for DataObjects.Net and Help Server for bloggers, article writers and user group speakers.

The rules:

We give promotional points for each publication or talk related to DataObjects.Net.
The idea and content of publication or talk must be previously approved by us to apply for points, although there can be exceptions. So you can apply for points after the publicaiton or talk, but we don't guarantee they'll be provided in this case.
Exact count of promotional points in each particular case is determined by the scoring rules described below. Scoring rules might change later.
Each point is equal to 1 EUR.
You may acquire our licenses, upgrades and support subscriptions for your promotional points, or get a discount for the same amount of EUR. If item is priced in other currency (e.g. USD), the conversion rate for your points is determined by this way: http://www.google.com/search?q=1+eur+in+usd
Unfortunately, promotional points aren't convertable to real money :)

Scoring:

Publication in your own blog: PointsYouGet = 100 + 2 * CountOfVisitorsCameToUsFromArticlePageDuring1stMonth.
Publication of technical article on specialized site (CodeProject.com, etc.): PointsYouGet = 300 + 2 * CountOfVisitorsCameToUsFromArticlePageDuring1stMonth.
Publication of short article / announcement on social link exchange resource (reddit.com, stumbleupon.com, webresourcesdepot.com, etc.): PointsYouGet = 0.3 * CountOfVisitorsCameToUsFromArticlePageDuring1stMonth.
Talk @ .NET UG / ALT.NET UG or similar event: PointsYouGet = 300 + 20 * CountOfListeners.
Additionally, we provide 1 Standard Edition license (of either DataObjects.Net or Help Server) to be gifted to a participant that:
a) Will take active part in discussions;
b) Will really need the license.
Placing logo of one of our products with link to us at your web site: PointsYouGet = 0.5 * CountOfVisitorsCameToUs. New points are calculated each month.
Something else, that might be interesting for us: we're open for any interesting suggestions, so please send us your proposal by e-mail. This includes writing a sample for us, adding some missing functionality, improving our documentatiuon and so on.

Remarks:

CountOfVisitorsCameToUsFromArticlePageDuring1stMonth is determined by our Google Analytics counters installed at x-tensive.com. We'll send you a screenshot (or a set of them) approving the info.
CountOfListeners is determined by your photos or video.

So hopefully, some of you will like this idea. By heping us to promote our products, you're getting indirect advantage as well: better sales usually imply faster development.

"Guess, who" quest

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 10:26:00 +0000

Our designer just shared the photos of our team members that, by his optinion, express their characters best of all. Definitely a "must see" page, if you'd like to know "who is who" @ our team ;)

Dmitri Maximov talks about our new "Envy" project

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 10:24:00 +0000

Here is the whole story. If you'd like the idea, don't forget to leave a comment there. AFAIK, they spent a lot of time on planning and discussions.

15% discount on Help Server till the end of March

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 05:13:00 +0000

Enter 2010.03 coupon code after following any of "Buy now" links on this page to get it.

"Can ORM make your application faster?" series

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 05:04:00 +0000

In March I started to write a series of posts called "Can ORM make your application faster?". 6 posts are already there, although the whole sequence isn't finished yet (planning to do this in two weeks).

I hope it will be interesting for anyone who uses ORM tools or considers this.

DataObjects.Net: upcoming changes and plans

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 04:48:00 +0000

Recently I made two important posts related to DataObjects.Net future:

Please read them, if you're using this product or planning to use it.

Discount and subscriptions on DataObjects.Net

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 04:43:00 +0000

We updated "License" page in DataObjects.Net Wiki - now it reflects some changes we're planning to implement. There are:

Discounts: right now we offer 15% discount for new orders, and 10% - for subscription prolongations. The offer is intact till March 31, 2010.
Subscriptions: now you can pay for SMB and Enterprise licenses by ordering a subscription with 2-month billing period. So totally there are 6 payments, 20% of pay-at-once license cost each, thus total license cost is about 20%. But imagine: 99 USD per month - it's cheaper than VPS, and there is 15% discount! Conditions will never be more attractive. I wrote we'll adjust the prices in June, mainly to properly position the product relatively to its competitors. Check out e.g. this one, and think which of such functional can be covered by DO4 with DisconnectedState.
Internal license is not available now.

New posts in blogs

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 01:02:00 +0000

Alex Yakunin's blog:

Dmitri Maximov's blog:

Alex Kofman's blog:

Denis Krjuchkov's blog (new!):

Alex Ilyin's blog (new!):

P.S. Guys, sorry, but I just decided to share your Skype pics here - people should know your real nature :)

// Actually I did this just to add some colors. And I know they don't read comments.

Online web help: industry standards, help browsers \ converters and help authoring tools

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 23:58:00 +0000

Abstract: this article might be helpful for you, if you ever considered publishing product help on the web. It provides a short review of online help browsers used by market leaders, as well as widely adopted commercial and freeware solutions allowing to publish product help on the web. So if you're planning to publish help files for your product on the web, you'll be aware of all the options, as well as of standard user expectations.

Disclaimer: since my company has its own product in this category, I can't pretend to provide fully independent review of various help browsers. But I'll try to.

What is really important for your potential (or existing) customers browsing your help? There are many factors (documentation quality itself, usability, design), but finally all of them can be expressed as overall user experience in comparison to widely known help browsers on the market, such as online MSDN Library web site or Visual Studio .NET Help.

Online help browsers used by market leaders

Microsoft MSDN Library
URL: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/default.aspx

Nice features:

3 versions – Classic, Lightweight Beta, ScriptFree
Search with hints, but only in Classic version!
Good URLs
Good print version
Community content (comments), "Rate the article".

Notes:

No index - likely, because it must be incredibly large there
I don't understand why it always reload the whole page. In general, this makes impression of slower operation.
Open TOC nodes get closed on navigation (except the ones in current navigation path).

Summary: really good browser for such a large help collection.

Adobe Online Help
URL: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Acrobat/9.0/Professional/index.html - for Adobe Acrobat

Nice features:

Comments, rating - with RSS
Good design
Good URLs (but see the notes below - it looks like plain HTML everywhere)
No need for Print button :)

Issues:

TOC disappears when you click on a TOC link
TOC always gets completely loaded.

Notes:

No AJAX, no frames
No index
Search there relies on global search at Adobe.com.

Summary: this is mainly plain HTML (except comments), with all the limitations. The same approach won't work for large help collections (references, etc.). But Adobe team made really a good job - all the exposed documentation there is relatively short.

Autodesk Online Help

URL: http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/2010help/ - for Maya

Issues:

Top frame URL does not change. It seems there is no way to get link to current page.
Keyword and search indexes are fully loaded into the browser on navigation to corresponding tabs. Chrome process immediately eats ~ 200Mb.
It seems search is implemented in JavaScript.
No "Print" button.
Buggy splitter (IE8, Chrome, Firefox 3.6).
I'd say, design looks a bit ancient ;)

Summary: an attempt to provide Windows Help user experience there looks at least as unfinished.

JetBrains WebHelp
URL: http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/webhelp/ - for ReSharper

Nice features:

AJAX TOC with sync on navigation
Search on the right is good solution for wide screen (now it is the most frequent case, especially for developers).

Issues:

No URLs. Permalinks are available, but they lead to pages without header, TOC and Search.
No highlighting of search results
No index (probably, JetBrains help does not contain it)
No "Print" button, but permalinks bring you to pages that are ideal for printing.

Notes:

Built with ExtJS.

Summary: very good, especially for API references. Good UX, as at the whole JetBrains' web site.

ComponentOne NetHelp
URL: http://helpcentral.componentone.com/Documentation.aspx - for all C1 products

Nice features:

"Previous page" and "Next page" buttons available at toolbar.

Issues:

Top frame URL does not change. It seems there is no way to get link to current page.
TOC, keyword and search indexes are fully loaded into the browser on navigation to corresponding tabs.
Most likely, search is implemented in JavaScript.

Summary: visually better than Autodesk Online Help, but UX is very similar.

Oracle Help Technologies

URL: http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/java/help/index.html - there is a link to demo.

Nice features:

All the features I expect to see (based on e.g. MSDN library experience) are available there.

Issues:

No good URLs, but there are permalinks.

Notes:

Animation of left pane is slooow... Completely unclear, why they use it at all there.
Design must be improved (my own opinion = very subjective).

Resume: one of the most featured help browser among the others. The only lacks I'd list is its design & slow animation.

Eclipse Documentation
URL: http://help.eclipse.org/galileo/index.jsp

Nice features:

All the features I expect to see are available there.
Good search results (with quotations).

Issues:

No URLs, no permalinks.

Notes:

Index search returns paged results. Looks a bit strange from the point of UX.
Really ancient design.

Resume: one of the most featured help browser among others here, although I think its design must be improved as well.

Mono Documentation
URL: http://www.go-mono.com/docs/index.aspx

Nice features:

AJAX TOC
It works noticeably faster than other help browsers - at least, from our office. Most likely, they properly tuned up content caching headers there.

Issues:

No search
No index
No URLs
Clicking on "permalink" closes all the nodes in TOC
1px splitter - I noticed it only by occasion :)

Resume: search feature must definitely be added there. Generally, it must be better, since Mono is positioned as free alternative to Microsoft .NET. The only fact partially "saving" them now is that people can use Microsoft .NET help instead of this one (although Mono has a set of unique assemblies).

Other examples:

PHP Help: http://www.php.net/manual/en/
MySQL Help: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/
Maple Help: http://www.maplesoft.com/support/help/AddOns/view.aspx?path=MaplePortal

Online help browsers available on the market

This part contains just a list of them: usually product web site provides all the necessary information (supported features, browsers, etc.).

Supported help formats (.CHM, .HxS, etc.) and server platforms are mentioned here. Products are listed alphabetically.

A!K Research Labs chm2web
Product page: http://chm2web.aklabs.com/
Online demo: http://chm2web.aklabs.com/helpfr/

Supported help file formats: .CHM
Supported server platform: any (generated web sites use only HTML and JavaScript).

Herd Software Development WinhelpCGI
Product page: http://www.herdsoft.com/linux/produkte/winhelpcgi.html
Online demo: http://www.herdsoft.com/ti/winhelpcgi/

Supported help file formats: WinHelp (.HLP)

Supported server platform: Linux, web server with CGI support is required.

Oracle Help Technologies
URL: http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/java/help/index.html - there is a link to demo.

This tool was described above.

Supported help file formats: Oracle Help

Supported server platform: cross-platform (viewer is implemented in Java),

X-tensive.com Help Server

Product page: http://www.x-tensive.com/Products/HS/

Online demo: http://help.x-tensive.com/

Supported help file formats: Microsoft Help 1.x (.CHM) and 2.x (.HxS), plain HTML
Supported server platform: Windows, IIS 6.0/7.0 with ASP.NET 3.5.

Help authoring/generation tools supporting web help (website) output

Tools listed below are capable to generate web site from help project. They do not support standard help formats, but if you're building a documentation using one of these tools, it can can be converted to a website exposing it on the web.

Adobe RoboHelp
Product page: http://www.adobe.com/products/robohelp/

There are two ways of building web-based documentation in RoboHelp:

Using FlashHelp output format. An example is here (official).
Using WebHelp output format. An example is here (not official - unfortunately, I was unable to find an official one at Adobe.com, so I took one from this list).

ComponentOne NetHelp in Doc2Help

Product page: http://www.componentone.com/SuperProducts/DocToHelp/

Web help example: http://helpcentral.componentone.com/Documentation.aspx

This tool was described above.

Supported server platform: any (generated web sites use only HTML and JavaScript).

ExtremeEase HelpConsole

Product page: http://www.extremeease.com/HelpConsole_2008_Overview.htm

Web help example: http://www.extremeease.com/help/demo%20help%20system/default.aspx

Supported server platform: any (generated web sites use only HTML and JavaScript).

Helixoft VSdocman and VBdocman

Product page: http://www.helixoft.com/vsdocman/overview.html

Web help example: http://www.helixoft.com/images/stories/vsdocman/help/

Supported server platform: any (generated web sites use only HTML and JavaScript).

Microsoft Sandcastle

Product page: http://www.codeplex.com/Sandcastle

Sandcastle is general purpose documentation generator using XML comments in C# \ VB.NET files to build it. There are two ways of building web-based documentation using it:

Using DocSite Templates for Docproject. Example output screenshots are here (I couldn't find real web site, so there are just screenshots). Generated web site requires IIS 6.0 with ASP.NET 2.0 to run.
Using Sandcastle Website output. Examples of such documentation: first, second, third (not official, Sandcastle authors currently don't maintain official example site).

NDoc

Product page: http://ndoc.sourceforge.net/

Web help example: http://ndoc.sourceforge.net/reference/

Discontinued, although you still can use this tool to build documentation for .NET 1.1 projects.

Supported server platform: any (generated web sites use only HTML and JavaScript).

Links

P.S. Please leave a comment here, if you'll find a mistake.

DataObjects.Net v4.2 is released!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:33:00 +0000

DataObjects.Net v4.2 is our first official release after v4.0.5 (August 2009) - a bit more than 6 months have passed after that moment, and as you will find, we didn't waste the time during this period:

What's new

Manual. It's still a work in progress, but I admit most important 80% of it are already written.
Entity versions API: VersionInfo, [Version] attribute and a set of related classes allowing to track version changes and validate optimistic locking conditions.
DisconnectedState API capable of switching any Session to true "offline" mode. DisconnectedState objects act as moveable and cloneable caches that can be attached to and detached from sessions. They can be serialized, are capable of providing optimistic locking for entities they cache, moreover, the operation log they maintain can be serialized and sent to another machine separately. So this is really a huge improvement enabling DataObjects.Net to operate in disconnected or occasionally connected scenarios.
Full-text search working natively on MSSQL and PostgreSQL. Example queries are here; there is still no documentation for this feature, although its usage is really simple. Full-text search support isn't available for Oracle yet.
Support for SQL Azure, SQL Server CE, Oracle and standard connection strings.
Object-to-object mapping API. Again, uncovered in Manual, but you can look at code we're planning to use while describing this API.
Unified API for registration and activation of persistent types and services. IoC framework we use now is much more flexible; there is no dependency on Common Service Locator, but container we use is fully replaceable - e.g. you can use Unity instead of it (test is here - again, this isn't covered in Manual yet).
Future (delayed) queries, prefetch API and uber-batching provide much better performance almost for free.
Unified provider-independent exceptions.
Lots of LINQ provider extensions, including projections to custom types (POCO objects in LINQ queries), local collections in queries, custom LINQ compiler extensions and even custom query pre-processors allowing, for example, to automatically convert your queries to "localized" ones.
Richer Session-level events.
Much faster Entity or graph removal. Likely, you know DataObjects.Net (as before) supports pretty complex Entity removal process. It recursively discovers the graph of references to removing entities and finally removes nodes (Entities) and nullifies the edges (associations) in the whole graph. This ensures removal happens safely and every affected entity gets notified. But such a siscovery process is pretty complex: in DataObjects.Net v3.9 complex removal was the slowest operation (~2 times slower then entity creation). But now we've involved the whole bunch of new APIs to make this efficient: future queries and prefetch API are used to discover the graph faster, statement batching helps to "join" query operations with removals together. So I'm ready to bet complex removals are now at least 5-10 times faster than in v4.0.5.
A set of integrated services allowing to study the state of DataObjects.Net caches, invalidate them and execute such low-level operations on entities as direct field modification (w/o property setter invocation). DirectSqlAccessor is, likely, one of the most useful services among them.
Significant improvements in schema upgrade API. And yes, now there are move (to another type) and copy field hints.
New DomainUpgradeMode.Legacy allows to use DataObjects.Net with legacy schemas. There are still some limitations, but in many cases they must not act as show stoppers.
New SessionManager type simplifying usage of DataObjects.Net in web applications.
Support for custom type discriminators (use [TypeDiscriminator] and [TypeDiscriminatorValue] attributes).
TypeId column is created only when it's necessary.

We've made a lot of other features and changes, but I hope the most important ones are listed above now. If you're interested, see this and that lists, there are all the issues we've implemented from v4.0.5 release (198 in total).

Known issues

Installer

Install.bat \ Uninstall.bat files must be executed with Administrator permissions on Windows Vista and above. Of course, this is important only if you'll use them. Standard installer already does this (you'll be requested to provide Administrator permissions for it by UAC prompt on its start).

Framework itself

Oracle support for 10g is temporarily broken in the current version, so you can use it only with Oracle 9i and 11g.

Manual

A set of sections must be added, including "Disconnected operations", "Full-text search", etc.

Reference

We should remove the whole System namespace (earlier I wrote Xtensive.Core publishes some of its types there) from it because of Sandcastle bug - it was listing the types from mscorlib.dll there, but wasn't listing our own ones. Not really important (there are mainly extension methods), but unpleasant.

Sandbox projects

OrderAccounting project is buggy. Frankly speaking, we were unable to fix all the issues there during last days. The cause is DissconnectedState key remapping behavior on ApplyChanges, which is relatively new. All the issues there will be fixed shortly; for now we recommend you to study WPF - it fully relies on DisconnectedState as well now.

Nearest plans

Improve Manual and samples further releasing minor updates 1-2 times per month.
Migrate to .NET 4.0 and PostSharp 2.0. Or, more precisely, provide .NET 4.0 version - so far we aren't going to fully leave .NET 3.5.

Help Server v3.0.1 is released!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 22:18:00 +0000

We've just uploaded Help Server v3.0.1.

What's new:

New CSS-based themes designed to improve the usability: there are Blue and BlackCurrant themes with horizontal/vertical header. Tab bar is now always vertical.
Keyboard support: Alt-C (TOC), Alt-I (Index), Alt-S (Search); Up/Down/Left/Right, Tab, Shift-Tab; Enter (open the document). In Firefox Alt = Alt+Shift; in Safari Alt = Shift; in Opera Alt = Shift-Esc, Shift.
Upscale and downscale support (Ctrl-"+", Ctrl-"-" in most of browsers).
Opera & Safari support. Currently Help Server displays ideally in 5 major browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera.

Updates:

Various performance-related improvements. In particular, ~ 20-30% faster startup time on large help collections.

Screenshots:

As usual, you can download new version here.

X-tensive.com is updated (warning: beta version!)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:37:00 +0000

Today we've published a new (= face lifted) version of X-tensive.com. Changes there aren't dramatic, but I like the way it changed. Mainly, we touched the front page and DataObjects.Net page.

Press F5, if you feel there is something wrong - old CSS might be cached.

Note that it's a beta version, so there are lots of issues - some links from first page banner points to wrong articles; plus, there are pearls like "Localized versions of objects (January 2010)" (factual mistake: this is already implemented as Localization sample). They'll be eliminated during this week.

And, likely, you already know that on the beginning of the next week we're releasing two major updates to our products:

DataObjects.Net v4.2: the first v4.X release with Manual (we're true programmers ;) ) & tons of new features. For now you can check out the release candidate.
Help Server v3.0 fully supporting keyboard-only navigation and two absolutely new, shiny skins (check out). Have you ever seen more pleasantly looking online help browser? For me, now MSDN web site looks pale in comparison to it, not speaking about the usability.

So stay tuned :)

DataObjects.Net v4.2 RC is available

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:09:00 +0000

It happened: now you can download DataObjects.Net v4.2 Release Candidate. Its reference and manual (in PDF) are available there as well.

What's new

Please refer to this post for details.

Stability

The version we've published must be quite stable - especially, for Microsoft SQL Server and PostgreSQL. I just looked up test results @ our build servers - from 0 to 2 tests fail there out of ~ 1380 in different test configurations(mapping scenarios) for these two database servers.

So v4.2 RC is more stable than any official release we published earlier.

Known issues

Installer

Database creation wizard must be added for SQL Server!

Framework itself

Oracle support for 9i and 10g is broken in the current version (AFAIK, because of schema extractor bug), so you can use it only with Oracle 11g.

Manual

A set of sections must be added, including "Versions, CC & locking", "Full-text search", etc.

Reference

System namespace contains classes from mscorlib.dll, but doesn't contain our own ones. Must likely this is a result of bug in Sandcastle.
.HxS version: all resources from Manual are missing there (images, CSS, etc.). Since .CHM version contains all these files, this can be a result of bug in Sandcastle.

Samples

All connection URL lists in samples must be extended to support default SQL Server Express installation and, likely, SQL Server CE database.
WPF Sample logo: we must provide 64x64 icon here (current one looks absolutely inacceptable in Windows 7 taskbar).

Sandbox projects

OrderAccounting project:

No copyright, etc. (standard header for our .cs files)
Thrown exceptions aren't shown
Default connection URL must be set to memory (likely, the same must be done for other Sandbox projects)
Bugs:
- PlainWpf: Customers, Add ..., Close - error.
- PlainWpf: Default number is 0. KeyGenerator bug, or?
- Mvvm: error on any Add/Open action.

Nearest plans

We're going to fix most of these issues on this week (e.g. likely, the issues related to Sandcastle won't be fixed) and release v4.2 final.

There will be minor updates related to code base as well - mainly, bugfixes, if something new will be found.

New posts in blogs

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:08:00 +0000

Alex Yakunin's blog:

Dmitri Maximov's blog:

Alex Kofman's blog:

Testing new version of Help Server

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:08:00 +0000

We've just updated help.x-tensive.com to the upcoming Help Server v3.0.

What's new:

New CSS-based skins designed to improve the usability: there are Blue and Black themes with horizontal/vertical header (4 themes total; Black theme with horizontal header is here). Tab bar is now always vertical.
Keyboard support: Alt-C (TOC), Alt-I (Index), Alt-S (Search); Up/Down/Left/Right, Tab, Shift-Tab; Enter (open the document). In Firefox Alt = Alt+Shift; in Safari Alt = Shift; in Opera Alt = Shift-Esc, Shift.
Zooming (Ctrl-"+", Ctrl-"-" in most of browsers).
Opera & Safari support. So currently it works ideally in 5 major browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera.

If you'll find any bug there, please describe it in comments to this post.

New posts in blogs

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:06:00 +0000

Alex Yakunin's blog:

Dmitri Maximov's blog:

DataObjects.Net goes to Ohloh.net

LiveUI: new version and new web site

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:59:00 +0000

We are glad to announce new version of LiveUI web framework is out. Besides architectural improvements, it provides such new features as form validation, layouts, trees and Ext JS file uploading.

Visit its renewed web site to check out the demos. Note how they're integrated into LiveUI web site - UI composition is one of the most important features of LiveUI, so there is no IFrame; moreover, original demo modules were not modified to work as hosted components inside the main site (based on LiveUI + DataObjects.Net 4 as well).

You can view C# code of each demo online - ExtJS tree demo there provides code browser.

P.S. Manual is far from completion yet. But there is an introduction now.

New posts in blogs

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:23:00 +0000

The list of posts we published in our personal blogs from the last delivery of our newsletter:

Alex Yakunin's blog:

Dmitri Maximov's blog:

New posts in blogs

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:27:00 +0000

Here is the list of posts we published in our personal blogs from the last delivery of our newsletter. Most important ones are starred by *.

Alex Yakunin's blog:

Dmitri Maximov's blog:

Help Server 2.1.1 is released

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:20:00 +0000

We've fixed several important issues there; moreover, now it automatically switches to scriptless mode when JavaScript is not available.

Updates:

"Content" tab is usable even if JavaScript is turned off
PlainToc.aspx is removed
Memory consumption optimization.

Fixes:

Installer does not properly install web application on IIS 7
Articles inside help files can't be added to <nodes> structure
Articles from help files are not indexed by search engines, if they're added as separate nodes in <nodes> structure
Help files with the same name are not properly indexed by search engines.
Wrong locale decoding for .Chm files
Garbage information can be extracted from binary TOC of .HxS files
Invalid plain index can be extracted from .HxS files
"Loading..." is showing before loading process starts while scrolling up in "Index" tab
Wait page is showing only for "Search" tab
Invalid content encoding, see http://forum.x-tensive.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5515.

The updated files are already published in our Downloads area.

This month's offer: free consulting hours for SMB and Enterprise licenses

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:38:00 +0000

If you are planning to order commercial license for DataObjects.Net, right now is the perfect time for doing this:

We grant 160 hours (1 man-month) of consulting for each Enterprise license ordered till Oct 31, 2010.
40 hours (1 man-week) of consulting are granted for each SMB license ordered till Oct 31, 2010.
You will be able to use these consulting hours during 1 year after purchase date.

Consulting implies any works (including programming) related to development of applications on DataObjects.Net. We can assist you in development of persistent model, resolve any issues you'll face or even implement a custom extension to DataObjects.Net.

Note that till the end of this month we'll deliver v4.1 release:

Printable manual & actualized Wiki
DisconnectedState
ASP.NET MVC sample (NerdDinner running on DO4)
Implementation of many other features, such as Prefetch API and local collections will be improved.