Community Blogs

In my previous post I wrote about a small utility that automatically generates Data Transfer Objects from LINQ to SQL Data Classes. Few days ago I had the time to add an important feature – the application can now generate DTO’s from ADO.NET Entity Framework Model as well. I also renamed the application to DTOGenerator and published it in CodePlex. Data Transfer Objects in 2 Diagrams There are really a lot of explanations about Data Transfer Objects in the web. You can read about them in the MSDN Magazine . But, Here is a 2 diagrams that show the concept of DTO’s in 2 most common scenarios: Getting Information: DAL=>BLL=>GUI (click to enlarge) Insert Information: GUI=>BLL=>DAL (click to enlarge) How to Use DTOGenerator Creating Data...

Few weeks ago I posted in my Hebrew blog a post about using Data Transfer Objects to work with LINQ to SQL and ADO.NET Entity Framework (that currently both of them doesn’t support working with POCO). One of the comments I got was that using DTO’s takes twice the time than not using them. That’s because you have to write DTO class for each entity and you also have to write  method in the DTO class that return the DAL object (the object created by the ORM and mapped to a table in the DB) from the DTO and vice-versa. Although I don’t think it’s too much work, and i think that the advantages are significant enough to make the effort worth, I wrote during my job a small code generator that create DTO’s for each entity in the LINQ to SQL DataClasses...

Approximately hardly there is more than year back we have seen a new services platform - ADO.NET Data Services. Its occurrence has marked the beginning of wide use of the REST-approach by many developers. At that time this platform was represented as the convenient tool for access to data through HTTP. Lately it is possible to understand, that this tool is really successful - huge number of developers have started to use immediately it in the projects. The reason for it is quite logical - use of...( read more ) Read More...

Astoria team has released next CTP of ADO.NET Data Services 1.5. In comparison with previous release, CTP2 is really big work and we can observe now already that ADO.NET Data Services becomes even more powerful platform. As a whole it is visible, that development of Astoria is directed on more closer integration with Silverlight and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. What’s new in CTP2: Projection. It is new feature for Astoria which has appeared only in this CTP. This feature allows to build more difficult...( read more ) Read More...

Download the source project Image Working in Silverlight     I have seen a lot of comparisons made between ActionScript and Silverlight with specific focus on the difference in lines of code, and more specifically when referring to the drawing api.  What I thought I would do is do a little drawing and in this example I have developed a teeny tiny interface for a clock view, which has a method of simply SetTime(DateTime time)  and I have made one implementation of this Clock view which is an analogue clock.  I have used some simple ellipse equations to allow for dynamic resize and redraw and in hind sight I would refactor my code so as not to keep adding and removing the shapes which are UIElements.  I will make...

I am pretty sure that any web developer would hate an exception that is hard to catch. One of those is the one which says “ The Controls collection cannot be modified because the control contains code blocks (i.e. <% ... %>). ” In my case I got this exception on a page that was working perfectly about two days ago and now had been untouched since then. My first line of Googling defense resulted in articles like this article and other discussions that tell you to change the <%= xxxxx %> to <%# xxxxx %>. Below I show how my code was when I was getting the error. However just changing the <%= sign to <%# or moving the script tag within the content placeholder did not make any difference because even though it removed the...

I passed the Microsoft 70-536 exam. The next exam that I am targeting is the Microsoft 70-562 ASP.NET Application Development exam. I have been working with ASP.NET since version 1.0, so I should do well on this exam. Joshua Read More...

The T4 templates are compiled against .Net Framework 2.0 by default and it will be restricted to use LINQ and other .Net 3.5 features in your T4 templates. If you want to use any of C# 3.0 or .Net 3.5 features in your T4 templates, you have to specify T4 templates language attribute is C#v3.5 instead of C#. The .Net 3.5 features are using System.Core namespace so that you have to give reference to System.Core namespace in the T4 templates. The below is the syntax 1 <#@ template language= " C#v3.5 " hostspecific= " True " #> 2 <#@ assembly name= " System.Core " #> Read More...

Yes, you were not mistaken, having read title. Now we will look how it is possible to work with data from SQL Compact using ADO.NET Data Services. Important remark. Actually, SQL Compact not absolutely correctly to use together with ADO.NET Data Services. SQL Compact initially is not focused on a mode of the multiuser work and it is intended for other purposes – for use as local storage. Using SQL Compact as storage for ADO.NET Data Services can negatively affect productivity of your web service...( read more ) Read More...

When we work with ADO.NET Data Services we reference data model via generic-parameter. Thus, instance of data context class it is created by infrastructure of ADO.NET Data Services. In this case ADO.NET Data Services use constructor without parameters. Frequently such behavior quite enough – we create data model, in configuration file we register connection string and it works. However, it is possible to see scenarios when it necessary to meddle in this process. Causes my be very different: We need...( read more ) Read More...