by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
7/16/2009 3:50:05 PM
I joined Twitter on May 30th ( http://twitter.com/julielermanvt ). Since then I have written over 500 tweets. I realize that I have written only FIVE blog posts this month. Five in 15 days. If you know me, you will probably find that as shocking as I do.... [For the complete article see the Orignal Post link below] ...
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
7/3/2009 3:58:48 PM
She finally buckled. How many of us learned about Object Oriented Programming and oh so much more from Deborah? (Raising my hand) Deborah's Developer MindScape Subscribed... [For the complete article see the Orignal Post link below] ...
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
7/3/2009 3:29:34 PM
I can't believe I put up with this problem for so long. It was an easy solution, just not an obvious one.
Read more...
... [For the complete article see the Orignal Post link below] ...
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
7/2/2009 9:04:35 PM
I am very honored to be on a short list of books (three, in fact) recommended by David Chappell in his recent blog post “Good Books”. And I am in impressive company – with Dino Esposito & Andrea Saltarello and Jon Flanders. Here’s what David has to say about my book: Programming Entity Framework , by Julia Lerman. Any technology that attempts to provide an object/relational mapping seems to attract controversy, and the ADO.NET Entity Framework is no exception. Whatever your view o ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
6/29/2009 4:07:00 PM
Although Oracle has long had an area of it’s website dedicated to it’s .NET provider, ODP.NET , they have recently added a page specifically for users of Microsoft’s soon-to-be deprecated System.Data.OracleClient: ODP.NET for Microsoft OracleClient
No mention of EF support yet, not even in the new features list for the ODP.NET 11g Beta (11.1.0.7.10) . I’ll be watching Oracle’s .NET evangelist, Christian Shay’s , blog for more d ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
6/27/2009 10:24:00 PM
From Danny Simmon's blog :
App week is a time we set aside at periodically to devote as much of our attention as possible to using the EF and related technologies to build applications so that we can experience some of the joys (and pain) of our valued customers.
... [For the complete article see the Orignal Post link below] ...
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
6/26/2009 10:25:14 PM
Now that DataDirect’s Beta of their Oracle Provider with EF support is available, Jonathan Bruce (from DD) is starting to write technical posts about how to use it. Yesterday he posted Effective EF with Oracle And today: Effective EF with Oracle (Stored Procedures with REF CURSORs)... [For the complete article see the Orignal Post link below] ...
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
6/23/2009 6:38:00 PM
Most often when you want to interact with an object’s state, or change tracking information you cannot do that through the object itself. Instead you need to get at the ObjectStateEntry which the context created to manage the object. Inside the the ObjectStateEntry you have access to the current values, the original values, the EntityState (that property is exposed through EntityObject) and the ability to modify the state. In fact, in EF4, there's a new ObjectStateEntry method called Cha ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
6/23/2009 12:50:52 AM
There were three big things that the EF team could not get into the VS2010 box on time – POCO T4 Templates, Code-Only features (POCO without a model) and Self-Tracking Entities. Even though VS2010 is only in Beta 1, the way the release cycles work, these three things won’t be part of the RTM. But they are nearly ready and will be released a little out of band along with VS2010. There is plenty of info on the features already on the ADO.NET Team blog. Here is the related blog posts from the ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
6/21/2009 8:58:00 PM
While I was away Microsoft finally announced that they were deprecating their support for System.Data.OracleClient . Remember that “deprecated” means 10 years before it’s totally gone. It *will* continue to be supported.
In fact here’s the official statement:
Microsoft will continue to provide hotfixes for critical issues in System.Data.OracleClient as per the standard support policy for .Net Framework 4.0. We will also continue to make critical bug fixes in ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
6/21/2009 3:24:58 PM
Model Defined Functions are a great addition to EF4. It allows you to add functions directly into your model rather than having to place the additional logic into business classes. This not only allows the functions to be “just there”, but you can use them in queries, something that you cannot do with properties that are defined in the classes. Note that in the MSDN docs, these are called “Conceptual Model Functions” and also “User Defined Functions”. The basics for MDFs are simple enough ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
6/20/2009 7:02:00 PM
I've been using the DB Publishing Wizard in VS2008 and VS2010 and learning about the huge improvements to Web Deployment in VS2010. You can read more about my discoveries here: Visual Studio's Database Publishing Wizard and the new 1-Click Web Deployment
[A DevLife blog post]... [For the complete article see the Orignal Post link below] ...
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
6/20/2009 6:59:00 PM
Alex James, a program manager on the EF team, has been posting a series of EF tips that just keeps getting better and better. Most of the tips revolve around using EF today with some nods to the upcoming EF4 in Visual Studio 2010.
Read more….
[A DevLife blog post]... [For the complete article see the Orignal Post link below] ...
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
6/11/2009 9:01:34 PM
I love adding drama to my life, which is why for *this* DevTeach, I decided at the last minute (with permission) to change one of my EF talks to What's New in EF4 and also to use VS2010/EF4 for my other talk and my workshop.
I have been using VS2010 Beta 1 at home on a VPC that is hooked up to an X64 machine with plenty of RAM. But the VPC was killing me when hooked up to my travel laptop which is X86 and only has a total of 4GB, which translates to only 3GB.
I thought I had done someting wr ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
6/9/2009 7:12:24 PM
The "VTCodeCamp" exploration committee has just gotten confirmation on a location for the very first Vermont Code Camp.
It will be on Sept 12th at the Business School of Administration at University of Vermont . The UVM Business School has been very supportive and generous in making this happen.
We'll start organizing shortly.
Thanks to fellow exploration committee members: Rob Hale , Rob Rohr , Martin Stefanov, Carl Lorentson and Laura Blood.... [For the complete article see ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
6/7/2009 1:31:23 PM
Chris Bowen , Bob Familiar and Jim O’Neil return for tour #9 of the MSDN Roadshow this week! The full agenda is below, but in summary, these are free, full-day events for developers and architects, covering Windows 7, ASP.NET MVC, WPF, Silverlight 2 & 3, Developing for IE8, and Data Access Guidance. Details at: http://blogs.msdn.com/cbowen/archive/2009/04/30/announcing-the-summer-2009-northeast-msdn-roadshow.aspx Register directly at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDeta ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
6/5/2009 1:54:16 PM
For those of you ready to ring the death knell on LINQ to SQL, hold your horses and check out this post about fixes & enhancements to L2S in VS2010/.NET4. LINQ to SQL in VS2010/.NET 4... [For the complete article see the Orignal Post link below] ...
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
6/5/2009 1:51:21 PM
Did you know that Microsoft released documentation and created a ton of forums for the VS2010/.NET 4 Beta release? Here’s a blog post I wrote on my DevLife blog that can get you started finding critical resources. VS2010 & .NET 4 Beta Resources (forums, docs, etc.)... [For the complete article see the Orignal Post link below] ...
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
6/2/2009 5:15:12 PM
Tonight I’ll be doing a presentation to the Ft. Lauderdale user group via Live Meeting . I’ve been playing with a WPF app that uses EF and Twitter together for something a little different than the norm to demo. And I’m doing it in VS2010. Why not? I’ll also be doing a first for me which is using a web cam while I’m presenting. Should be fun. Better go get out of my p.j.s (just kidding) but I *do* need to straighten up my desk! It’s at 6:30 pm EST.... [For the complete article see t ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
5/31/2009 11:00:45 PM
Now that I’m on Twitter, I wanted to start playing with the twitter feed in code. It took a while of banging around before I discovered the SyndicationFeed namespace that was introduced in .NET 3.5, yes a while ago! Check it out.... [For the complete article see the Orignal Post link below] ...
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
5/28/2009 9:33:52 PM
Previous "What's New in EF 4 Posts"
A Look at Lazy Loading in EF4 May 22
Upgrading EF projects to EF4- Don't forget to target .NET 4.0 May 22
Customizing EDM Code Gen in EF4 May 21
Complex Types in the EDM Designer in EF4 and a look at updating complex types in code May 21
The much improved EDM Wizard Pluralization in VS2010 May 21
Checking for EF to TSQL Query Compilation Changes in VS2010 Beta1 May 19
EF4- What is an ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
5/28/2009 2:37:27 PM
I had an interesting question by email today and I thought I would share the response.
If you have done any EDM testing with the Northwind database, you may be familiar with the self-referencing relationship in the Employee entity.
Employees are related to other employees who are their managers. This is a 0..1:* ("zero or one to many") relationship. I.e. one manager might manage many team members but a team member (in Northwind) has only one manager.
The email, however, wa ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
5/23/2009 1:45:00 AM
Previous "What's New in EF 4 Posts"
Upgrading EF projects to EF4- Don't forget to target .NET 4.0 May 22
Customizing EDM Code Gen in EF4 May 21
Complex Types in the EDM Designer in EF4 and a look at updating complex types in code May 21
The much improved EDM Wizard Pluralization in VS2010 May 21
Checking for EF to TSQL Query Compilation Changes in VS2010 Beta1 May 19
EF4- What is and is not supported May 13
Lazy ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
5/22/2009 6:01:00 PM
Previous "What's New in EF 4 Posts"
Customizing EDM Code Gen in EF4 May 21
Complex Types in the EDM Designer in EF4 and a look at updating complex types in code May 21
The much improved EDM Wizard Pluralization in VS2010 May 21
Checking for EF to TSQL Query Compilation Changes in VS2010 Beta1 May 19
EF4- What is and is not supported May 13
When testing some of the query compilation the other day in my post Checking for EF ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie via
Julie Lerman
on
5/21/2009 9:39:21 PM
Because the text editor for VS2010 was rewritten in WPF, WPF allows for some pretty cool new features. I poked around the editor for a while today to see what's in there. What I found is in my DevLife blog post: VS2010 Code Editor helps you navigate around your code [A New DevLife post]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
4/26/2009 8:13:15 PM
Writing your first unit tests can be daunting and can cause you to put off the task
for years, like some people I know, but it doesn't have to be that way!
One thing that has stopped me for a long time was that I always seem to be interacting
with data and lately using Entity Framework to do so. Neither of these paths lend
themselves well to Unit Testing. But I decided finally to take the plunge just to
get started, with something that is more real to me than the classic bank account
withd ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
4/22/2009 5:33:10 PM
I recently did a full day workshop on EF on the Web and as one of the various ways
to build web apps with EF, wanted to show creating a site using ASP.NET Dynamic Data.
It was my first time playing with it and considering that it uses EntityDataSource,
found it much easier than using the DataSource control directly. I wrote a blog post
on my DevLife blog about what I discovered. ASP.NET
Dynamic Data WebSites
[A New DevLife post]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
4/22/2009 5:27:36 PM
At our Vermont.NET meeting this past Monday, Eric
De Carufel presented on the Parallel Extensions. I learned a lot and followed
up by checking out some of the MSND resources as well. Here's a write up of what really
impressed me about the ease of making great leaps in application perf with the new
stuff that we'll see in VS2010 around parallel computing. .NET
4.0's Parallel Extensions
[A New DevLife Post]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
4/6/2009 12:32:31 PM
I saw this fly be on a listserv thread.
Military Veterans and their families can buy MS Office Standard for $50 through the
various US Military web sites and offices.
Start here: http://www.microsoft.com/office/offers/military/
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
4/1/2009 10:36:37 PM
I wasted most of my afternoon trying to fix a bizarre error that appeared after I
finally moved thedatafarm.com (the main applicaiton) from 1.1 to 2.0. There was a
compiler error telling me that my ascx file names/references were ambiguous.
The runtime error was
"[controlname]_ascx is ambiguous in the namespace ASP".
So for example
"talksbydate_ascx is ambiguous in the namespace ASP".
Clearly my control is not named in a way that it conflicts with an ASP control.
And o ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
4/1/2009 3:16:33 PM
I've been asked this question enough times that I thought I would blog it. While it
may seem obvious to some, it is not to everyone who is just starting out with Entity
Framework or LINQ to SQL or ADO.NET Data Services.
When you write a query against an Entity Data Model or a LINQ to SQL model that query
is what goes to the server.
There are people who are concerned that the filters don't get applied until after
the data has been returned from the server.
In other words if you writ ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
3/31/2009 1:16:25 PM
A few months ago, Diane
Wilson reported her performance findings when comparing EF to LINQ to SQL to DataReaders.
Something looked wrong to me because her numbers were vastly different than what I
had been seeing in the many perf tests that I did. We talked a bit and I pointed her
to the critical perf blog posts that Brian Dawson wrote on the ADO.NET Team blog last
year. These posts explain where the performance costs are with queries and how you
can improve on them.
1. Exploring
the P ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
3/30/2009 5:47:35 PM
I know so little about C++, but will always remember Kate
Gregory touting "no more double underscores" as a big benefit of C++ in
VS2005.
I don't even know where they are used.
But I've had my own underscores to contend with for many years - the line continuation
notation for Visual Basic.
Finally, they are going away in VB10. As a developer they are a pain, but they are
even worse when you are formatting code for articles and books.
Apparently the final blow to t ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
3/29/2009 6:06:25 PM
Many to Many relationships are defined in a database using a join table.
Depending on the schema of that join table, they are represented differently in an
Entity Framework EDM. The Person...PersonStores...StoreLocations becomes a clean *:*
relationship between Person and Store. Person has an EntityCollection of stores and
vice versa. The join table is hidden in the mappings. However the Person...FavoriteBreweries...Brewery
relationship includes the FavoriteBreweries jo ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
3/23/2009 2:19:34 PM
I have used EF with SQL Server 2008 & 2005, Pro, Standard and Express. I have
not every bothered playing with CE, because for the most part the experience should
be the same. But there are a few places where you might run into trouble. One is related
to connecting to the database and has nothing to do with EF, meaning that you can
experience this with other data access technologies as well. The other has to do with
the newSequentialID type which is not supported.
The first of these pro ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
3/19/2009 10:09:44 AM
I'm not saying great because it shows where EF shines in performance, but because
the tests look interesting and thorough. Alex
Konduforov goes past the typical "let's test performance" queries that just do select
* from customers and looks at query performance from a lot of angles. In a powerpoint
deck where he presents his results, he also gives some great overview highlights of
what impacts performance in these technologies.
Thanks to Eric
Nelson for the pointer to this.
I've ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
3/18/2009 4:18:04 PM
At the MVP summit, we saw a presentation on the introduction of FKs into the EF metadata
and framework. While they go a long way to solve the many problems of using Entities
across tiers, you will now have an either/or choice to make with your model.
When building a model, you will now choose between associations and foreign keys ("FK
Associations"). I had a big problem with this when I saw it because it takes a giant
step away from Entity Relationship Modeling and much of what we know abo ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
2/27/2009 2:23:01 PM
Do you know the function of every item in the Visual Studio menu? Probably not. I've
decided to start forcing myself to discover and learn about menu commands that I've
never used. It didn't take long to find one that was new to me and it led me on an
educational path of discovery about searching in Visual Studio. Read
more...
[A New DevLife Post]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
2/22/2009 6:37:51 PM
Note that I am referring specifically to "Crystal Reports 2008", not the version,
"Crystal Reports 2008 Basic", which comes packaged with Visual Studio 2008.
Today for some reason, I could no longer open up any Crystal Reports in Visual Studio
2008. When I attempted to open them, they did not open or throw an error message,
however the VS2008 Document Outline window would open up with the text "There are
no items to show for the selected document."
Then I went to try to start up the st ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
2/21/2009 3:03:34 PM
I flatter myself by suggesting that this comes from "the great minds think alike department",
as Danny
Simmons has written a blog showing how to do something that I am quite fond of
- searching the ObjectContext for entities that are already in memory.
If you don't know EF very well, you might assume this is an obvious task, but unfortunately
it's not.
The GetObjectByKey method will search first in the context but then go to the database
if the entity is not already in there. What's ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
2/18/2009 6:50:40 PM
I found out the hard way that this is not pretty. In the long run, you'll have to
have all users completely uninstall and reinstall their apps. Here
are more details...
[A New DevLife Post]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
2/16/2009 10:43:01 PM
One of the big questions people have about Entity Framework's dynamically generated
queries is "what does the store query look like?", immediately followed by "is that
store query acceptable"?
There are a few ways to see what the store generated queries look like. One is to
use ObjectQuery.ToTraceString .
It's possible to use this method with LINQ to Entities queries as well, because
you can cast a L2E query to an ObjectQuery. The other way to see the generated store
query is good o ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
2/8/2009 3:27:57 PM
Last week, I was demoing some basic Entity Framework queries to a client and explaining
that the store queries are parameterized, alleviating one area of concern.
But when we looked at SQL Profiler the query was not parameterized. Why was this?
The query I had used was:
var query = from c in context.Customers where c.lastname=='Smith' select c;
I had hard coded the string for lastname into the query which resulted in the following
SQL:
SELECT TOP (1)
[Extent1].[Cu ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
1/28/2009 9:22:26 PM
Have you ever used SSMS to build db scripts and data for you? I have been doing that
lately and found a big problem with it skipping random tables. Here's
how I've gotten around the problem .
[A New DevLife Post]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
1/22/2009 8:30:58 PM
Here is an error you might get if you are refactoring a project that contains an Entity
Data Model.
For search purposes:
BAModel.csdl(3,4) : error 0019: The EntityContainer name
must be unique. An EntityContainer with the name 'BAEntities' is already defined.
BAModel.csdl(118,4) : error 0019: Each type name in a schema must be unique. Type
name 'BAModel.Activity' was already defined.
One reason you might see this is if you have two models in a project that have t ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
1/20/2009 12:24:40 AM
Have you seen Mike Campbell's videos on SQL Server. They are aimed at folks like myself
- developers who have to admin the database, too. There are now 4 hours worth of content
on the site in the form of short & sweet 8-12 or so minute lessons. Read
more or just go directly to the SQLServerVideos.com .
[A New DevLife Post]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
1/16/2009 6:41:14 PM
I'm working back and forth with the production editor at O'Reilly to put the final
touches on my book. She tells me it heads to the printer next Friday.
What ever will I do with myself after next week?
Pre-Order
through Amazon
Pre-Order
through O'Reilly's web site
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
12/30/2008 8:13:49 PM
After a lot of head scratching, I was finally able to accidentally duplicate a mapping
issue reported to me by a reader of the Rough
Cuts version of my book, Programming Entity Framework . Then after a lot more head
scratching, I was able to discover the pattern and workaround for this problem, which
has also surfaced a number of times in the forums.
The issue is when creating associations where one of the ends is a 0..1 (zero or one)
and one of the entities involved is derived from anoth ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
12/23/2008 2:35:10 AM
The Silverlight
Toolkit folks at Microsoft are prioritizing their "Honey Do" list and one of the
items on it is to be sure that more of their examples are in VB, not just C#. Of course,
the toolkit should have originally had both C# and VB examples, but that's a different
issue.
In order for that item to be high on their list, they need to see that there is a
demand for it. So if you are a VB developer and would like to see the ToolKit include
VB examples, go to their CodePlex site, sign ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
12/15/2008 7:33:27 PM
I've been writing a lot of C# code lately and its been fun. Why? Because it's new
and different. But it's gotten me thinking more about the professed benefits of learning
a new language every year. Read
more here...
[A New DevLife Post]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
11/23/2008 3:53:13 PM
I got myself pretty confused when I was debugging C# and VB code at the same time
in a recent DevConnections session. For a good laugh (at my expense...again) click
here !
[A new DevLife post]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
11/23/2008 3:49:56 PM
When I finish writing my book, I'll have my brain back to read other .NET (& related)
books. I've got my short list waiting in the wings and you
can see it here .
[A new DevLife post]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
11/20/2008 8:43:27 PM
With my permission, Simon
Segal has put together a bunch of tutorials that I have written in my blog as
a single PDF. He had done it for himself and asked if it was okay to share. Here's
a link to his blog post. Julie
Lerman Entity Framework Tutorials consolidated
Perhaps I'll get his PDF and put it on my learnentityframework.com website as well.
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
11/12/2008 6:47:50 PM
A few years ago at DevConnections I had a long talk with Gert
Drapers (from the SQL Server team) about EF when it was still in an early beta.
I'm now at DevConnections in Las Vegas and caught up with Gert again and had an interesting
follow up conversation about EF now that it is released. I really like getting the
perspective of folks who bring a different expertise to the table. We talked a lot
about stored procs especially the DBA perspective.
The EF designer currently [handily] s ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
10/31/2008 12:19:14 PM
I have been maintaining a consolidated list of Entity Framework Resources on the Learn
Entity Framework website, which is the site for my book. I dubbed the site name
before we had the final name for the book, which is Programming Entity Framework,but
kept "learn" since it is shorter.
On the page there are links to relevant forums and blogs, MSDN's DevCenter,
links to podcasts and webcasts, links to resources about version 2, a list of providers
that now support Entity Framework ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
10/29/2008 1:21:39 PM
A spontaneous website called NotAtPDC.com just popped up which is presenting Live
Meetings for those of us who can't be at PDC and want that live interaction.
PDC is also putting all of the sessions online on Channel 9. It took me a while to
figure out how to find them so I've explained how to find the videos.
But it's all in a blog post on my DevSource blog so CLICK
HERE for the details.
[A New DevLife Post]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
10/28/2008 1:03:26 AM
I was translating a threading example that I originally wrote in VB and C# was giving
me a hard time about something that made no sense.
It turned out that in C#, a delegate for a ParameterizedThreadStart must literally
use the object class in its signature.
For example in VB, I had this method
Public Sub UpcomingTripEmail( ByVal cust as Customer)
.. do some stuff End Sub
And I had no problem creating a Thread with it
Dim workerThread = New Thre ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
10/24/2008 3:47:46 PM
Adam Kinney has shared an astonishing video of a 3D game, a port of Quake for you
gamers, that is written from the ground up in Silverlight by a French programmer,
Julien Frelat. Read
more (and see the video) here...
Thanks to Aaron
Seet for the heads up!
[A New DevLife Post]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
10/17/2008 7:40:55 PM
Camey Combs is trying to choose between a few different titles for her Seattle
v4 Code Camp (Nov 15-16) presentation on Entity Framework. I like "What's the
EFing Big Deal?" What do you think?
Go
vote on Camey's blog or better yet, go to the Seattle Code Camp and attend her
session! I personally know that she's getting to know EF pretty darned well!
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
10/11/2008 9:51:15 AM
I
have received an email from O'Reilly to let me know that the Rough Cuts version of
my book is now online.
Currently you will find a handful of the chapters from the early part of the book.
These are introductory chapters about the model, querying, stored procs and using
EF for databinding in WinForms and WPF apps.
While all of the book chapters are already written, I am cleaning them up. As each
chapter gets to that next stage (cleaned up) they will be pushed up to the ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
10/10/2008 10:10:39 AM
Last night's London
GGD event was wild, fun and eye-opening. There were 150 people signed up. I'm
not sure how many were in the room.
The event began with a presentation by Elizabeth Kernan about research that she has
been doing on gender in the workplace and it's impact on innovation. Their study was
broad sweeping in terms of subjects - they worked with teams from over 100 companies
in a variety of industries ranging from Volvo to Symantec. The teams were of various
sizes up to 30 peo ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
10/9/2008 3:19:14 PM
Last night I participated in the 3rd Amsterdam Girl Geek Dinner and I'm so happy I
was able to! The dinner was at a very cool bar called the Flexbar in Amsterdam. About
30 or 35 people showed up. The GGD is run by three women. One of them is Melanie Rieback
who is actually an ex-pat American and a Comp Sci professor at a local university.
I mean Dr. Melanie Rieback. Melanie just defended her doctorate based on research
she has been doing with RFID security. It's really inspiring to be around p ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
10/2/2008 7:04:35 PM
As
we begin the push of getting my book, Programming
Entity Framework , towards production, it is still going to be a number of months
before it is out in print. Currently, OReilly is targeting January 2009.
But why wait for paper (and the perfection of the final edits)?
We've decided to take my work in progress and make it available as a Rough Cut
title on OReilly.com and Safari.
The first set of chapters, which are introductory, will appear sometime in the next
few days ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
10/1/2008 2:05:45 PM
London Girl Geek Dinners just celebrated their 3rd Anniversary. Since its inception,
the idea has taken hold and there are now GGDs all over the world. Read
more here!
[A New DevLife Post]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
9/30/2008 1:11:52 PM
I saw this thread early this summer and have spent hours looking for it since.
Since i just came across it, I thought I would make a blog bookmark to it.
Multiplicity
of 0..1 and SQL eager loading problem
Here's what the thread is about. When you query an entity that has a parent, for example
an OrderDetail, that query will go over to Order so that EF can build the related
EntityKeys. This is because when OrderDetail is materialized, it will need to populate
OrderDetail.OrderRef ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
9/25/2008 9:53:28 PM
I have a database hosted at ORCSWeb .
As soon as I started using SQL Server 2008, I couldn't get at it from the Object Browser
of SS Management Studio. I could access the database and work with it. I was just
having a particular security problem with the Object Browser. When I tried to expand
the list of the databases so that I could see mine and work with my db objects, I
kept getting an error message that my login was invalid for someone else's database
- even though I wasn't trying to acce ... [ read more ]
|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
9/25/2008 12:46:48 PM
I've written a 14-page article (that's pretty long!) comparing DataSets, LINQ to SQL
and Entity Framework. It's in the current issue of CoDe Magazine. Read
more here...
[A New DevLife Post]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
9/19/2008 3:49:07 PM
Not all CLR methods can be used when building LINQ to Entities or LINQ to SQL queries.
The method needs to be something that can be expressed in the native query language.
So if you have a date field, you can't use ToShortDateString in the query since there
is no equivalent. You'll get runtime exceptions when you use these as the query compiler
goes to work.
There are others that work, but you may not want them.
Case in point is doing a query to search on the first letter of a property ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
8/19/2008 3:22:52 PM
The Northwind database has 27 tables and views. AdventureWorksLT has 17. Sound like
your database? Probably not.
What have people who have been pushing the designer with databases with hundreds or
even thousands of tables & views been experiencing?
According to Noam Ben-Ami who is on the team that works on the designer, the performance
for the designer itself should have " typically
reasonable " performance for up to "about 120 tables, after which things
begin slowi ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
8/17/2008 3:03:06 PM
From Microsoft
Entity
Framework Supported Mapping Scenarios
Writer: Asad Khan
Published: July 2008
Applies To: Entity Framework
Summary: This white paper enumerates the supported mapping scenarios in Entity
Framework. It also mentions important design considerations for store schema in
order to deal with advanced mapping scenarios.
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
8/15/2008 10:25:31 PM
Naturally, these are on my mind because my hand still stings from getting slapped
by the runtime when I tried to do this.
LINQ to Entities does not support projecting into known types.
If you have a type or struct defined such as:
Public Structure KeyListItem Public ID As Integer Public Name As String End Structure
and are doing a query that will project out an ID and a Name, this is the natural
way to write the query, given some experience with LINQ to [anyth ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
8/14/2008 4:26:57 PM
Not everyone is having the easiest time installing this service pack.
Here
is a list of hints, links and things you should be prepared for before applying the
service pack.
[A New DevLife Post]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
8/13/2008 12:39:22 PM
The Sept/October 2008 issue of CoDe
Magazine contains an article that I wrote highlighting some of the major differences
between DataSets, LINQ to SQL and Entity Framework. As long as the article is, and
it is the longest I have ever written for CoDe at 14 pages, of course it was impossible
to cover everything. But I used as my basis my own experience, plus the many questions
I have been asked directly or seen on forums and in blogs over the last few years
as a basis for what I thought was i ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
8/12/2008 7:04:15 PM
I've created a site that will eventually be used for my book, Programming Entity Framework.
Before I had a book title I had started out using LearnEntityFramework.com then
pointed ProgrammingEntityFramework.com to
the same spot. In the long run the urls just point the thedatafarm.com/learnentityframework.
It's all good.
The site uses the free "express" version of Graffiti from Telligent (Community
Server's younger sibling) which is easy to use and very customizable. ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
8/12/2008 2:39:50 PM
The starting point for EF in the online documentation is here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb399572.aspx
This will help! You'll need to dump your Internet Explorer Temp files if you are
not getting SP1 documentation.
Otherwise you'll see Beta 3 and it will be obvious. Here is a screenshot of the
new docs.
|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
8/12/2008 11:01:19 AM
On the ADO.NET Team blog:
Third
Party Provider Support for the Entity Framework RTM
I found this video a few weeks ago from Sybase on YouTube of all places where they
talk about SQL Anywhere 11's support for EF when someone had emailed me asking about
SQL Anywhere support.
SQL
Anywhere 11 supports the Entity Framework
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
8/11/2008 8:58:11 PM
The release of Visual Studio Service Pack 1 today (currently available for MSDN Subscribers
to download), marks the RTM of Entity Framework and ADO.NET Data Services. It's been
a long haul for EF, initially shown off in early 2006. ADO.NET Data Services, or ANDS
as I've seen Shawn Wildermuth call it (though I still call it Astoria) is a bit younger,
making its first public appearance in March 2007 at MIX.
So they are finally here. There were a lot of doubting Thomas' in the first year or
s ... [ read more ]
|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
8/11/2008 3:32:57 PM
VS2008 SP1 RTM is now on MSDN Subscriber downloads.
It's an 830MB download, unlike the gigs and gigs of the actual product. But of course,
it's still pokey because there's quite a bit of competition on the wire!
Two worthy additions:
1) Don't forget that the Silverlight .NET 2.0 Beta Tools for VS will be refreshed
shortly. Current bits do not work with SP1 . Here is the
patch but DON'T MISS Amy Dullard's blog post, Silverlight
Tools Must be Updated After Installing Visual ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
8/8/2008 6:56:18 PM
Don
Kiely has been preaching the evils of Full Trust in .NET, SQL and Windows for
quite a while. SO when he saw a question on the ASP.NET Forums on using the Dynamic
Data Controls with EF as the data provider that involved a trust issue, he was on
it like white on rice.
Dynamic
Data with the Entity Framework in Medium Trust
The issue was specifically when you are using a website not a web application and
you have the EDMX right in the site. In this scenario, the model files are alw ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
8/8/2008 6:31:49 PM
Worth repeating from Guy
Burstein's blog . I've followed some issues people are having with this
on an email list. VS2008 SP1 will release "in about a week from now", or
sooner, or later, but it is very close. So hang in there.
Certain SQL Server 2008 features install components that are also
part of the release version of Visual Studio 2008 SP1. So, if Visual
Studio 2008 without the service pack is installed on your machine, you cannot install
SQL Se ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
8/5/2008 3:21:07 PM
I am copying (and slightly modifying so that it is not out of context) a forum post
that I wrote to put here in my blog. Here's
the original thread if you are interested.
When working with object services, you can query data using LINQ to Entities
or ObjectQueries with Entity SQL.
Unless you specifically use LINQ syntax in your EF query, it will be an ObjectQuery.
An example.
context.Customers is an ObjectQuery. The same as context.CreateQuery<Customer ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
8/2/2008 5:12:37 PM
I
remember seeing WPF/E, the early version of what was to become Silverlight, at Microsoft
a few years ago, then running over to the building where the TabletPC team lives and
asking if the WPF inking features were going to be in Silverlight. As you may or may
not know by now, the answer was yes and it is the InkPresenter control in Silverlight
that enables drawing in Silverlight apps. I had been doing a lot of work with Ink
on the Web and was frustrated by the limitations and challenges of ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
7/30/2008 2:21:05 PM
I have been writing gobs of Extension methods for entity Framework through the course
of writing my book.
I was inspired by this forum thread to create extension methods to overload existing
methods in the APIs.
One pattern that was annoying me was that frequently when I'm using the GetObjectStateEntries
method of the ObjectStateManager, I want to filter on a type. It only meant building
a linq expression with the method in it
Dim CustomerEntries= From entry _
... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
7/28/2008 12:22:48 PM
While I continue to enjoy being at home in Vermont for the whole summer, I have to
look past this fantasy to the reality of my upcoming travel where I get to share the
Entity Framework (and Silverlight) love around the world. I have yet to get this all
onto my website schedule.
Here's what's on my schedule:
Oct 5-6 SDN
Netherlands (Amsterdam)
Oct 10 or thereabouts Tentative - Girl
Geek Dinner in London
Oct 13-14 DevReach (Sofia,
Bulgaria)
Nov 10th: Full Day EF Workshop ... [ read more ]
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|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
7/26/2008 5:11:01 PM
Mike
has posted a bunch of ADO.NET Data Services videos up on Channel 9.
Even though I haven't had a chance to check them out yet, it's easy to presume that
these are going to be as great as all of his other screencasts.
http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/UK
He says there are more to come.
Enjoy.
|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
7/26/2008 1:45:30 AM
I learned a neat ESQL trick from Danny
Simmons today.
The most basic Entity SQL expression is one that would simply query for a single entity
with no filters, no projection etc.
context.CreateQuery<Customer>("SELECT VALUE con FROM MYEntityContainer.Contacts
AS con")
You can actually express the string using only the target collection:
context.CreateQuery<Customer>("MyEntityContainer.Contacts")
and EF will build the same command tree as it d ... [ read more ]
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|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
7/25/2008 7:14:49 PM
Kathleen Dollard is building a list for C# devs who are going to be building projects
in VB. Read
more
[A New DevLife Post]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
7/16/2008 2:46:05 AM
I have finally finished what has been, so far, the most difficult chapter of my book.
It is a chapter about Relationships and Associations in the Entity Framework. Relationships
as a first class citizen in an API is a pretty novel thing for me (and many) and judging
from the percentage of questions in the forum about relationships, I think it's one
of the most confusing and complicated pieces of the framework. Complexity is not a
bad thing, and it certainly is a fascinating adventure ... [ read more ]
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|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
7/14/2008 1:21:27 PM
But it didn't make Money's
top 100 list because they only looked at cities with population of 50,000 - 300,000. Here's
their criteria.
Burlington is a little under 40,000.
Kathleen
Dollard's home town of Ft. Collins CO was #2 on the list.
But I still think Burlington is one of the best small cities in the U.S, but since
we like to keep it that way (small) maybe it's better that we weren't on the list
after all.
Unfortunately, there are other factors that might kept us o ... [ read more ]
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|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
7/13/2008 3:27:34 PM
Someone posted a question
in the Entity Framework MSDN forum asking for an example of overriding SaveChanges.
I thought I had posted one in an early thread but couldn't find it. Nor could I find
an obvious example anywhere on the web, so I thought I would put one here on my blog.
There aren't a lot of public events on the classes created from the code generated
classes of an Entity Data Model. But you can override the ones that exist.
ObjectContext exposes SavingChanges.
EntityOb ... [ read more ]
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|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
7/10/2008 9:07:06 PM
A few months ago, Brian Dawson gave us a look at a bunch of perf tests for querying
with ADO.NET and Entity Framework.
Exploring
the Performance of the ADO.NET Entity Framework - Part 1
Exploring
the Performance of the ADO.NET Entity Framework – Part 2
ADO.NET
Entity Framework Performance Comparison
I adapted and enhanced those tests for my session at TechEd and then added even more
logic to them as I dug into performance for my book.
I thought I would share ... [ read more ]
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|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
7/9/2008 3:28:19 PM
At Remix 07, I got an intro to the fact that Robotics Studio has APIs in there that
are being used for some amazing projects that have nothign to do with robots. Last
month I had a chance to talk with the man who heads up the Robotics Division at Microsoft
and then coincidentally discovered an article on the same in the June 2008 MSDN Mag. Read
more...
[A New DevLife Post]
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|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
6/29/2008 3:57:38 PM
After appying SP1 on one of my development machines, I got a COM Interop error when
opening up SQL Server Management Studio. It took a few minutes to find the correct
search terms on the web, but I found the simple fix to the problem pretty quickly. Read
more here...
[A new DevLife post]
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|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
6/25/2008 11:40:49 AM
Dinesh uses humor (laced with a little well deserved sarcasm) in response to "the
sky is falling because Technology X doesn't fit my way of programming" ....
Design
of LINQ to SQL - What was I thinking or was I?
|
|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
6/24/2008 9:54:34 PM
A few months ago I came across this
great interview with Jimmy Nilsson where he is talking abot LINQ and Entity Framework.
I love what he says about LINQ - that it's a beatiful thing and it's small & compact.
And I'd been very curious to know what Jimmy thought of EF since I missed my chance
to meet him and ask directly when I went to Stockholm. The most memorable thing he
said is that it is "very big". Indeed it is. And of the things he didn't like about
SQL, the most critical was the l ... [ read more ]
|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
6/24/2008 7:53:45 PM
Anyone who knows me knows that I just LOVE being in the middle of a controversy. Well,
that's a lie. I sure know how to pick'em, though, eh?
I have to deal with java and open source people (many who I am friends with,
respect and admire) harassing me because I use Microsoft products.
I have to deal with C# developers (many who I am friends with, respect and admire)
harassing me because I code with VB mostly.
Now I have to deal with Domain Driven Developers (many who I am ... [ read more ]
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|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
6/12/2008 1:09:30 PM
In moving a Silverlight 2.0 app to use Beta2, I hit a wall when trying to access my
WCF Service which was working perfectly fine in Beta1.
I was getting a 404 telling me that the service could not be found. While the exception
itself told me nothing more than that a 404 had been returned (with no inner exception),
thankfully the exception popup window had the critical info in the header: TargetInvocationException
crossed a native/managed boundary. So I knew that the cross domain problem ha ... [ read more ]
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|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
6/11/2008 12:16:59 PM
"Eager Deferred" is a bit of an oxymoron, but let me explain.
Example:
You have queried for customers.
For particular customers you want to get their orders AND order details.
customer.Orders.Load will only get the order entities.
But what if you wanted to do something similar to Include in there?
eg customer.Orders.Load.Include("Details")
That syntax is not possible. and is something Ben S added to the Entity
Framework v2 Wish List started by John Papa ... [ read more ]
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|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
6/7/2008 12:23:59 PM
Late last night, Scott Guthrie announced (and provided his usual extensive details
and samples) that Beta2 for Silverlight 2.0 was released along with a new version
of the VS2008 tools (compatible with the VS2008 SP1 release) and a new CTP of Blend!
I also found a few minor API changes so far, one that impacts the InkPresenter (which
is now on the toolbar in VS2008 tools) and one that impacts tooltips. Read
more here...
[A New DevLife Post]
|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
6/7/2008 12:57:23 AM
|
|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
6/6/2008 8:38:11 PM
Matthieu has written a very
clever method extension that allows the important eager loading method, Include,
to accept a lambda expression (strongly typed) rather than a string for its parameter.
I like this better than my method of ensuring that I type the strings correctly, which
is to start entering the parameter without the quotes and let intellisense help me,
then add the quotes after the fact.
Here is the actual documentation that
covers Include (look under "Query ... [ read more ]
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|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/31/2008 1:54:56 PM
In the past few weeks, I have received an number of different VB2008 books for
distribution at the VTdotNET User
Group. I thought authors/publishers were cutting back on VB books but this is great
to see. I wonder why the change, though? Read
more here...
[A New DevLife Post]
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|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/29/2008 2:56:30 PM
What will ADO.NET 3.5 look like with the release of VS2008 & .NET 3.5 Service
Pack 1? See
if this image makes you think: "Oh, right! Hadn't thought of it that way!".
[A New DevLife Post]
|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/29/2008 1:58:28 PM
In Beta3 of Entity Framework there was a teaser in the properties window for Entities
and their properties. We saw properties for Access, Getter and Setter but they were
inactive.
With the latest bits (available in the VS2008 SP1 Beta) those properties have come
to life. Here's what you'll find and where you'll find them.
Entity has an Access property that can be set to Internal or Public.
Each property (scalar as well as navigation) has a Getter and Setter that can be Pub ... [ read more ]
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|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/27/2008 2:01:09 PM
I meant to mention this in my last blog post ( An
excerpt from my book about eSqlBlast ) which is that with the new Entity
Framework bits, the schema files that are generated when you build your EDM project are
embedded into the assembly by default. Yet eSqlBlast depends
on files that are accesible via the file directory.
What I've been doing is temporarily changing the MetaData Artifact Processing
property of the model to Copy to Output Directory , building the project,
the ... [ read more ]
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|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/26/2008 10:04:07 PM
eSqlBlast – Entity SQL Query Helper
I could not have figured out some of these more complex Entity SQL queries without
the help of a tool called eSqlBlast written by Zlatko
Michailov (in his free time) who is the Program Manager for Entity SQL. The tool
is available on Code Gallery along with a number of other tools for Entity Framework
at http://code.msdn.com/adonetefx .
With eSqlBlast, you can test queries and receive immediate feedback, whether it is
an error message describing a pro ... [ read more ]
|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/26/2008 6:20:31 PM
I have been learning a lot about EDM QueryViews lately, though
more of what I'm learning (the hard way) is what you can't do with QueryViews.
Most of what you'll find documented about QueryViews is to replace
mappings so that your resulting entity is read only. But there are more uses for QueryViews.
THe problem is that I"m having a very hard time discovering what those are and therefore
it's trial and error (and some help from Srikanth on the EF team who seemed to get
stuck with Holida ... [ read more ]
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|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/23/2008 1:21:54 AM
I was getting ready to suggest this feature because it's a pain to "move" properties
if you are deriving types or doing entity splitting.
I actually use the method of going into the EDMX file and copying the properties around
in there so that I don't have to worry about the attributes and facets. Especially
when I have a lot of properties to move.
Just out of curiosity I right clicked on an scalar property in the designer and saw
Copy on the context menu, so I clicked it. Then tried pa ... [ read more ]
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|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/22/2008 6:40:36 PM
The SP1 Beta does not include updated documentation for Visual Studio 2008, but it
is all online.
You can start here: http://vs2008sp1docs.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx
A direct link to EF documentation is: Entity
Framework
The tools documentation is not contained within there. Instead it is here: Entity
Data Model Tools
The Astoria documentation is here: ADO.NET
Data Services Framework
To me the most helpful thing is to see where it lives in the hierar ... [ read more ]
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|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/20/2008 3:58:19 PM
I hadn't noticed this before.
If you have a stored procedure that is mapped to an entity such as "GetCustomersSince"
which returns Customer entities, the command is executed when you create the query,
not, like with normal queries, when the data is first needed.
In case that sentence was too convoluted...
Here is a LINQ to Entities query (the same is true for LINQ to anything and also for
Object Services (context.CreateQuery))
Dim query= From c In context.Customers S ... [ read more ]
|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/20/2008 12:58:46 PM
Michale de la Maza follows up his popular C# day events with a VB.NET day at the Microsoft
office on Tuesday May 27th.
Join us for a relaxed, no cost introduction to VB.NET programming. By engaging
in participatory activities, you will learn some of the most common and powerful features
of the VB.NET language. This day is not lecture-based. There will be fewer than 60
minutes of lecture material -- almost all of the time will be spent on participant-guided
activities. Everyone who attends ... [ read more ]
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|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/18/2008 2:22:31 PM
Having just done a presentation at DevTeach called ".NET 3.5 Data Access Guidance",
which I will be doing again at TechEd in a few weeks and I have a CoDe Magazine article
on this topic coming up as well, it is definitely interesting to me to see what is
probably the first somewhat official looking (it's a blog post, not a white paper)
guidance from someone at Microsoft about Why to
use Entity Framework . Outside of a direct comparison of LINQ to Entities
vs LINQ to SQL by Elisa Fl ... [ read more ]
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|
by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/15/2008 11:01:32 PM
When VS2008 SP1 beta was released on Monday, I was getting ready to head for
Toronto to present three sessions at DevTeach which would be on Wednesday and Thursday.
One session was on Astoria another touched LINQ to SQL/EF and DataSets and the last
was a deep dive into EF with respect to tiered programming.
The new bits would impact these talks, especially the Astoria and deep dive EF talk
a lot and I truly did not want to show people what were now incorrect namespaces,
clas ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/12/2008 4:52:25 PM
The Astoria Team has provided a very impressive list of what's
changed and what's new in the new bits for Astoria that were released with VS2008
SP1 today.
I was surprised to see they already have the Batching and Optimistic Concurrency stuff
in there that they were only just recently considering.
Here are my own notes from trying to get an Astoria demo working before I had access
to the nice list that is now available.
1) If you are using an Entity Framework EDM as your data so ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/12/2008 4:49:46 PM
Along with Soma and
others, the ADO.NET
team has announced that the next beta of Entity Framework is available with the VS2008
Service Pack 1 BETA bits . The Astoria team already has a list
of changes on their blog and there will be one coming for EF as well.
In the meantime....
Never a dull moment. I have two EF sessions this week at DevTeach and have to very
quikly overhaul my demos.
Here are some of my notes.
EDMX Changes
Designer section
<edmx:ReverseEn ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/12/2008 4:37:24 PM
from Soma:
Visual
Studio 2008 and .NET FX 3.5 SP1 Beta available now
Posted Monday,
May 12, 2008 9:02 AM by Somasegar
"In the next few hours, the bits for the service pack beta will be available
for download here .
"
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/9/2008 1:05:42 AM
I have found myself explaining this in conference sessions so I thought I would write
it down in my blog.
Entity Framework has a Golden Rule. Though shalt not do nuttin' that the developer
has not explicitly told you to do. The lack of implicit lazy loading is one of the
more notable (and hotly contested by some) example of this.
But one day when I was coding, Entity Framework did something that I did not ask it
to do. I emailed Danny
Simmons to tattle on the API. But Danny explained ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/9/2008 12:52:18 AM
Like Jeremy Miller, who has Transparent
Lazy Loading for Entity Framework on his Christmas Wish List , Timothy Khouri does
not like the fact that Entity Framework doesn't support Lazy Loading. However, since
he really likes Entity Framework, he wrote some code that will enforce Lazy Loading
for him. Entity Framework promises not to do anything you don't explicitly tell it
to do, so Timothy found a way to keep telling EF to do this for him because that's
what he wants.
After looking at LIN ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/7/2008 6:33:03 PM
Entity Data Models have a lot of rules. They are necessary for the integrity of the
model, though if you are not familiar with depth of EDMs and *why* these rules
exist, many of the mapping rules may seem to make no sense when it comes
trying to implement them. This gets hairy when you are mapping stored procedures.
Roger Jenning's solution is to create
stored procedures that will map properly, rather than suffer wtih the ones that
already exist.
The first level ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/7/2008 1:10:13 PM
I was perusing Chris
Williams' blog over on GeekswithBlogs.Net. I met Chris many years ago through
INETA and in person at an INETA User Group Leader event. Chris ran the user group
in Charleston, South Carolina and has since moved to Minnesota where he has survived
his first winter with all of his fingers and toes intact. He is a really nice, unique
and memorable guy (okay the tat's definitely help him stand out).
While looking at his blog, I saw a post
of photos from a funny ad t ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/7/2008 1:54:17 AM
And I haven't even had a chance to look at any presentations yet.
Here's what's on my schedule so far.
Monday morning - speaker training
Monday afternoon - INETA User Group Leader Meeting (yay!)
Monday evening - Speaker dinner
Tuesday 1-2: Vista Ask the Experts Booth demoing Annotation in Silverlight
Wednesday Lunch: Women in IT Panel (yay)
Wednesday 2:45: Birds of Feather "Is Entity Framework right for your application?"
Wednesday 7pm: Birds of Feather with Steve S ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/6/2008 3:21:49 PM
It was pointed out to me recently that I've gotten a bit lazy with my coding. I completely
blame it on implicitly typed local variables. Read
more here...
[A New DevLife Post]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
5/5/2008 6:19:00 PM
Veggie garden's ready in case I ever get ready. I did already put some lettuce and
peas in on the left.
Only super hardy stuff goes in now. We can't do our regular planting (tomatoes etc)
until after Memorial Day.
Short growing season in Vermont.
Compost is ready and waiting.
Lupine are coming up. They are SO hardy.There are hundreds of them in the front field.
Looks amazing in early June!
The front garden has already got ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
4/29/2008 1:07:48 AM
EntityStateObjects, to me, are one of the most important little pieces of the EF puzzle.
IT is the EntityStateObject that maintains all of the critical info for change tracking.
But it's hard to get the big picture of what's going on in there when debugging because
all of the important stuff is delivered through methods, not properties.
I wanted so badly to write a debugger visualizer for them but they are not serializable
(big pout) so instead, I wrote an extension method that uses a Cond ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
4/27/2008 1:20:30 PM
Along with a few hundred other DevConnections attendees,
I got a sneak peek of the EntityDatasSource control on Monday during Danny
Simmons' Entity Framework Architecture session.
I think I paid more attention to the control than what Danny was saying because I
was desperate to see how it was set up.
Before digging in though, I also wanted to note that the UI of the EDM Designer looks
really pretty. I noticed that the association lines/connectors looked di ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
4/26/2008 2:14:09 PM
It's been in there from the start (well at least since VS2003), but I have only recently
started taking advantage of the "Format Document" and "Format Selection" functions
in Visual Studio to help with the readability of code or xml. Read
more...
[A New DevLife Post]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
4/26/2008 2:18:28 AM
I COPIED THIS ENTIRE BLOG POST DIRECTLY FROM GUY
BARRETTE'S BLOG and made one little edit! So shoot me!
DevTeach
Toronto is coming - Register!
If you're living in Toronto and don't attend DevTeach , [ Guy
Barrette says he's ] gonna beat you up and force you to code in Clipper for the
rest of your life. Seriously, DevTeach has one of the greatest speakers lineup
of all the .NET conferences.
Honestly, where can you hear, see, talk to ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
4/25/2008 2:55:09 AM
This bit me in the butt ... TWICE!
When using WebDataGen so that you can get a proxy class for an Astoria data service,
if you are running under UAC, the output file will NOT get created, however the tool
reports that the file was created successfully.
I spent a lot of time trying to find the file or figure out what I was doing wrong.
Then a week later, when it was late at night and I was sick so my brain was a little
foggy, I had to create another proxy but totally forgot the pain ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
4/18/2008 9:34:50 PM
I was experimenting with creating data services from IQueryables. Rather than use
the canonical example of creating a set of 3 person objects on the fly and exposing
them, I decided to create a service for my application log. (Not something I plan
to expose to the web, just a learning tool ).
I created a wrapper class for the System.Diagnostics.EventLogEntry class because I
needed to have an ID field that could be read. Thanks to Jonathan
Carter's blog post , I knew that there was no pro ... [ read more ]
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by
Julie Lerman via
Julie Lerman
on
4/18/2008 7:45:47 PM
Adding to the extensive Training Kit ofr Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft has recently
released a set of Hands on Labs that are part of a training kit for the .NET 3.5 Extensions
that is still in production. Read
more...
[A New DevLife Post]
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