All posts by Julie

Microsoft hires another Entity Framework/Astoria nut

Data Access

Jonathan Carter was very interested in Entity Framework and Astoria. Last month, he started working for Microsoft as an Technical Evangelist. So he gets paid to share his excitement about these and other .NET technologies.

Guy Burstein was very interested in Entity Framewrok and Astoria writing lots of posts about the two topics. Today Guy announced that he has started working for Microsoft Israel with the Developer & Platform and Adoption team. He too says he has found the sweet spot of getting paid to do something that you are good at and love.

Congrats!!

Gee, it’s warmed up to minus 0 degrees

Vermont

Well, that would be -0.3 degrees. Good day to stay inside and work even thought it’s beautiful and sunny out with still llots of fabulous powder over at Mad River. To some it just means a better day to skin up the mountain than to sit in the chair lift up high in the air with the bitter cold wind blowing in your face. Brrr.

Security focused MSDN & TechNet Events coming to Burlington Feb 26th

VTdotNetFeed

According to Chris Bowen’s blog, there will be a TechNet and MSDN event in Burlington on February 26th.

The afternoon MSDN event will be two sessions covering:

MSDN:  “Explore IIS7, ASP.NET and Tackle Web Security”

Check out the latest coding solutions with like-minded developers at MSDN Events. Witness the evolution of IIS and see why IIS7 is our most extensible, manageable and secure Web platform on record. You’ll learn how to extend application services – including membership, role management and navigation – from ASP.NET and how to consume them from a wide variety of clients. As a special bonus, we’re also tackling the biggest security risks and clueing you in to the top counter measures available for Websites and Web applications of all kinds. Don’t miss these free, live sessions that are really on your wavelength.

Register for the MSDN event at www.msdnevents.com

 

The morning TechNet event is also about security:

 

TechNet:  “Secure Your Critical Data”

Step up and save the day with hot new solutions from TechNet Events. Make sure your company’s private information is fully secured – even if it falls into the wrong hands – with Windows BitLocker disk encryption technology in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. You’ll also learn how the new Network Policy Server Role in Windows Server 2008 enables powerful functionality in the form of Network Access Protection. Now you control who can access your network – whether wireless or wired. Sign up now for these free, live sessions in your local area.

Register for the TechNet event at www.technetevents.com

A good day to play hookey

Purely Personal

Today I did what people think that I do frequently, though it’s actually (and sadly) not common. I went skiing. That’s right  – on a work day! RIch and I took off at 8:30 and didn’t get home until about 3:30. We hooked up with a fellow Vermont.NETter and awesome tele skiier who commented on how many people must have called in sick that morning (which made Rich and I , both self-employed, laugh about being the only ones not getting paid to ski), and spent most of the day in the woods. I’m a crappy skiier in the woods (always worried about those trees!) but I still love being in there. It’s not pretty, but I can get through it.

Mad River got about 2 feet of this fluffy stuff on Monday and Tuesday.So we had epic powder (western style powder, deep and light and fluffy) and I wasn’t going to miss it. Even if it was 0 degrees out. Brr! 

 

Big fat puppies and little fat puppies

Purely Personal

My parents continue to send me pictures of the puppies to put on their website.

The first litter , which was born on Nov 22  – the amazing litter of 17 – has puppies that are over 10 lbs. already. They had their first cookies today. Their eyes have been open for a while.

The second and third litter, born Dec 7 & 8th, are still small, but they are getting fatter and cuter (is it even possible?) every day.

 

Links for keeping an eye on database providers’ Entity Framework status

Data Access

I’ve been snooping around the web and found links for many of the db vendors (and 3rd party vendors) to try to watch their own news about what they are doing for Entity Framework.

Here’s Dave Sceppa’s list of companies working on EF providers and interleaved with his list are my best stabs at a blog or page on their website to watch:

Providers Targeting Publicly Available Versions Within Three Months of RTM

·         Core Lab – Providing connectivity to Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite databases

Core Lab does not seem to have a blog but here is their News page

·         IBM – Providing connectivity to both IBM DB2 data server and Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) databases

Took some digging, but here’s the guy responsible for letting non-IBM developers use IBM’s databases: Grant Hutchinson’s blog.

·         MySQL AB – Providing connectivity to MySQL databases

MySQL is opensource. The best resource I think to watch is Planet MySQL, which is an aggregated feed of various MySQL bloggers.

·         Npgsql – Providing connectivity to PostgreSQL database versions 7.3+ and 8.x

Npgsql stands for .NET Provider for PostgreSQL. Opensource. Here’s the project page for the .NET projects. Also, they were very excited about their Entity Framework provider getting in the news!

·         OpenLink Software – Providing connectivity to Oracle, Informix, Ingres, Sybase, MySQL, PostgreSQL, DB2, Progress and Microsoft SQL Server databases, and any data source accessible via OpenLink ODBC or JDBC bridge drivers

OpenLink doesn’t seem to have a blog either. Here is their launch page for info on ADO.NET providers that they write.

·         Phoenix Software International – Providing connectivity to SQLite databases

hmmmm??? I found Phoenix Software International, but nothing seemingly related here…

·         Sybase – Providing connectivity to SQL Anywhere databases

Here’s the SQLAnywhere launch page

·         VistaDB Software – Providing connectivity to VistaDB databases

VistaDB blog

* – The providers in the list above are also working towards publicly available versions of their providers to work with Beta 3 of the Entity Framework.

Providers Targeting Publicly Available Versions in 2008

·         DataDirect Technologies – Providing connectivity to multiple data stores including Oracle, Sybase, Microsoft SQL Server and DB2 via DataDirect Connect® for ADO.NET

None other than Jonathan Bruce! 🙂

·         Firebird – Providing connectivity to Firebird databases

Firebird is open source. HEre is the Firebird Community News website.

And, missing from Dave’s list is Oracle.

I’m watching Christopher Shay’s blog for any news.

Telligent has really nailed it with Graffiti

Blogging

Yes, you are reading this on a dasBlog site and I love dasBlog, but I spent the Christmas holiday playing with the public beta of Graffiti and I really do think they have nailed it for a lightweight CMS/blogging system.

Out of the box, it is really simple to use, but don’t let it’s simplicity fool you. It is so customizable on two levels. For any end user, the widgets are fabulous and take no braincells to use. For those adept in CSS and HTML, the themes can be customized very deeply. The macros expose gobs of functionality and the views are really easy to leverage. I was able to give the site my own look by starting with one of the available themes, then replacing most of the image files that are used in the theme.

I believe that in using Graffiti, I’m getting a really good taste of either MVP or MVC here.

Also, the fact that you can just plop in an Access database (default) or other database without having to set up SQL Server if you don’t want to is a big advantage. This closes the gap between one of the important features of dasBlog – all of the content is stored in files so there’s no need to deal with SQL Server – and something like Community Server which requires a database. However, my blog is now made of up over 1300 separate xml files. This definitely makes me nervous. In fact, I looked at CS first, but was stopped by the fact that you have to host the database independently. I didn’t see a way to just add the tables and other elements into my existing hosted database.

I’ve been building something that is not even going to be used as a blog, but a mini-site where I can aggregate some particular blog posts and other content.

One tip regarding the Access database I can share is this. If you want to test Graffiti out locally and you are using Vista, there are a show-stopper issues with permissions to MDB files in IIS7. I spent hours trying to get around it and finally gave up. I was able to open and run it in VS2008 using the web development server instead. When I FTPd everything to my webhost (which means IIS6) there were no problems at all using the Access file. I ended up doing 98% of my customization on the hosted site anyway.