Blogging at the PDC08 crushed my good old refactoring is not free series. In other words, thanks for reading my blog. I hope you enjoyed my somewhat limited live coverage.
Big thanks goes out to Marjan for sharing these photo's. ps: I'm the guy with his arm under his chin.
While discussing the Entity Framework future with Tim Mallalieu another guru jumped on the couch. Don Box shared his definite experience, without going into much detail, wearing a Microsoft speakers shirt and the bathtub scene at Tech Ed Amsterdam (where Alex Thissen in red assisted). We talked about the future of Olso and language workbenches in specific domain's. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of Chris Anderson who also joined in for a couple of minutes. It was great fun being able to spend time on the couch with passionate Microsofties.
I fully agree with Tim Mallalieu to recommend LINQ to Entities as the data access solution for your application. Sure, for an object-oriented view of the database LINQ to SQL was somewhat useful but in essence this is a scenario that the Entity Framework supports as well. Yes, in some ways the Entity Framework does add a bit of complexity but then again creating a direct mapping with the Entity Framework isn't much more difficult then it would be with LINQ to SQL. Apart from the fact that Microsoft shouldn't have released LINQ to SQL as a product I was quit surprised about the wave of people adopting this piece of technology. A tool for direct mappings misused as an object-relational mapper felt awkward from the start. I hoped for a little while that LINQ to SQL would evolve in a fully fledged object-relational mapper, but the Entity Framework with it's EDM investment had more potential from the start.
We've spend a good amount of time talking with Tim (@PDC) on the future of the Entity Framework. The team is working hard on better POCO and TDD support and to deliver stories that support Domain-Driven Design over the next two releases. Most scenarios Alex and I explained to Tim have been thought through thoroughly and despite certain design choice which are arguable seen in isolation make perfect sense in a broader scope and the vision for the Entity Framework platform.
I'm looking forward to V2 and V3 with input from the dp advisory council... and can't wait to taste mEntity. To bad since I was looking forward to another technology deathmatch with Alex.