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# Don and Rob do the Blog! : Sam Gentile's Blog

Tuesday, February 25, 2003 10:41 AM by TrackBack
Don and Rob do the Blog! : Sam Gentile's Blog

# ASP.NET Forums : Sam Gentile's Blog

Tuesday, February 25, 2003 10:41 AM by TrackBack
ASP.NET Forums : Sam Gentile's Blog

# ASP.NET Forums : ScottW's ASP.NET WebLog

Tuesday, February 25, 2003 10:41 AM by TrackBack
ASP.NET Forums : ScottW's ASP.NET WebLog

# re: ASP.NET Forums

Wednesday, February 26, 2003 2:08 AM by Duncan Smart
"Unfortunately the search functionality of the forums is killing CPU utilization" - really? Do you use Full-Text Search?

# search engines and .aspx extension

Wednesday, February 26, 2003 10:45 AM by stefan demetz
sorry to bother you like this ...
since you are the asp.net "boss" I'd ask you whether you can solicit some of the search engines to take .aspx extensions seriously ....
many do not (yet) :(
surely MSN must like all us guys out there doing asp.net ....

Thanks
Stefan
stefandemetz@tiscali.it

# re: Getting to 0 bugs, Performance Tuning the Forums, and TechEd 2003

Friday, February 28, 2003 1:26 PM by Robert McLaws
So Rob, what is your current timeframe for Forums 1.5?

# re: Getting to 0 bugs, Performance Tuning the Forums, and TechEd 2003

Tuesday, March 04, 2003 6:12 PM by Rex
Sounds like fun Rob, I wish I was in your shoes, working on such cutting edge technologies! :)

# re: When good hardware goes bad

Thursday, April 10, 2003 11:49 PM by David P
Do you plan on making the source to your new search engine code available, and if so when? Thanks a lot.

cheers,

# Good Advice From Rob : ScottW's ASP.NET WebLog

Friday, April 11, 2003 12:20 AM by TrackBack
Good Advice From Rob : ScottW's ASP.NET WebLog

# About ASP.NET 1.1 : Christian Weyer: Web Services & .NET

Friday, April 11, 2003 12:20 AM by TrackBack
About ASP.NET 1.1 : Christian Weyer: Web Services & .NET

# re: Shipping ASP.NET 1.1

Monday, April 14, 2003 4:04 PM by Carson
Hey Rob - 1.5 looking very good indeed - any idea when you'll cut it loose on us?

# More caching goodness down the road : IDunno

Tuesday, April 22, 2003 6:23 PM by TrackBack
More caching goodness down the road : IDunno

# Not Your Father's Peer Review : ISerializable

Tuesday, April 22, 2003 6:23 PM by TrackBack
Not Your Father's Peer Review : ISerializable

# re: Bill Gates Review

Tuesday, April 22, 2003 9:03 PM by Jeff Julian
I really hate you. It has been a childhood dream of mine (since I was 12) to just meet Bill. I have never been able to see him is person, but I hope one of these days I will. I was probably the only 8th grader who read "The Road Ahead" during class.

# re: Bill Gates Review

Tuesday, April 22, 2003 9:57 PM by Marc LaFleur
Hmmm... I fear Jeff now. ;)

# re: Bill Gates Review

Tuesday, April 22, 2003 10:34 PM by Phil Scott
Bill is wise.
Bill is kind.
Bill is benevolent.
Bill, Be My Friend...Please!

# re: Bill Gates Review

Thursday, April 24, 2003 10:39 AM by Tobin Titus
You are living my dream. Not to meet Bill damnit! Just to be involved with the process such as yours. I too started a bit early. In 5th grade I was coding in BASIC on an Atari 800XL. I was playing Microprose' "F-15 Strike Eagle" game and decided I could do better. I told my parents I would one day work for Microsoft.

Flash forward last year. I got to work AT Microsoft on the ASP.NET support team in Charlotte. I just didn't work FOR Microsoft (I was contingent staff). Support was my hope to get in the door to something greater at Microsoft. I see that dream slipping away so count your blessings. I look up to you guys -- the ones that made it -- with awe.

Thanks for keeping us informed.

# re: Bill Gates Review

Sunday, April 27, 2003 2:02 AM by Mazen Alzogbi
I repeat what Tobin said; you are living my dream. I am, also, one of the early MS GW-BASIC developers. I've always wanted to work for Microsoft (Nah not local but HQ) and be one of the people who CREATE what other developers USE for their daily job (Just exactly as you, Rob, and others in the ASP.NET team doing and everytime I look at what you are producing guys I bow with respect. Keep up the good work and live our dreams, one day I might join you :)

PS: I would've never started with GW-BASIC if I knew that something as MC++ and C# would be created one day ;)

# Tablet PCs : Jesse Ezell Blog

Monday, April 28, 2003 10:09 AM by TrackBack
Tablet PCs : Jesse Ezell Blog

# heLP .Net Blog

Monday, April 28, 2003 10:09 AM by TrackBack
heLP .Net Blog

# Randy Holloway's Blog

Monday, April 28, 2003 10:09 AM by TrackBack
Randy Holloway's Blog

# BillG and Notetaking : Ted Leung on the air

Monday, April 28, 2003 10:09 AM by TrackBack
BillG and Notetaking : Ted Leung on the air

# re: Post BillG Review

Monday, April 28, 2003 11:18 AM by Marc LaFleur
Wow. Mr. Gates takes notes like I do. I use three sections (notes on what was said, notes on what I think about what was said, and questions).

# re: Post BillG Review

Monday, April 28, 2003 11:10 PM by HumanCompiler
Thanx for posting that, Rob! Very insiteful. Sounds like a lot of fun too! :D

I blogged a few weeks ago and mentioned that I've wondered why BillG isn't blogging yet? Sounds like a good idea to me! :P

# re: Post BillG Review

Tuesday, April 29, 2003 6:14 AM by steven
Yes, thanks Rob. Meetings with BillG and other executives happen every day all over the planet, but most people don't ever get a glimpse into them.

# re: Post BillG Review

Friday, May 02, 2003 12:06 AM by Tobin Titus
Marc LaFleur Posted @ 4/28/2003 10:18 AM
"Wow. Mr. Gates takes notes like I do. I use three sections (notes on what was said, notes on what I think about what was said, and questions). "

Was this in a book somewhere? I do the same thing. I use four sections as well and I can't remember where I learned it from.

# re: Post BillG Review

Tuesday, May 06, 2003 2:51 PM by jfiorini
That was a great post! Thanks Rob! It is always very interesting to hear about famous people in every day life.

# re: Post BillG Review

Thursday, May 08, 2003 1:35 PM by Paul Gielens
Sure BillG isn't using mind-mapping of his notes ;)

# re: Post BillG Review

Sunday, May 11, 2003 7:43 AM by Tim Scarfe
So much for Microsoft One Note ehh?!

# re: Post BillG Review

Sunday, May 11, 2003 2:34 PM by Sreedhar
It was quite interesting to read and I bit exited in knowing about BillG.

I am very much eager to read some more from you ;)

# re: Post BillG Review

Wednesday, May 14, 2003 3:46 AM by Mark Allanson
What happened to the tablet PC's for note taking? ;)

# Darrell Norton

Sunday, June 01, 2003 3:56 PM by TrackBack
Darrell Norton

# re: ASP.NET Developer's Cookbook

Sunday, June 01, 2003 7:07 PM by G. Andrew Duthie
As I mentioned to Steve, I'm looking forward to reading the book. And thanks for the nod. I'm pleased to be in such august company.

:-)

# .Avery Blog

Monday, June 02, 2003 11:10 AM by TrackBack
.Avery Blog

# re: Here we go again...

Monday, June 02, 2003 2:22 PM by ddysart
Awesome idea - no PPT. We need more people like you. I saw Dan Rogers do this in a UDDI demo at MTB years back - very effective and you got the point much faster.

Want to be even more impressive? Do what Dan did and code on the fl. Don't use the "I have a some code I'm going to paste in here" trick. You gain more credibility (which you don't need<g>) and a monkey can cut and paste code and hit F5.

# re: Here we go again...

Monday, June 02, 2003 5:16 PM by G. Andrew Duthie
Rob, I want a follow up on how your plan works out. I enjoy doing presentations, but I *loathe* putting together powerpoints, so if that works out, I may just have to try it some time.

I am so bummed that I'm missing out on all the fun with you guys, but OTOH, I do have the compensation of spending more time with Joseph, who's just started smiling in the last week or two. Wouldn't have wanted to miss that. :-)

Good luck with the presentation, and give everyone my best!

# re: ASP.NET Developer's Cookbook

Tuesday, June 03, 2003 7:03 PM by Norman Headlam
When will the book be available to the public?

# Post BillG Review

Sunday, June 08, 2003 8:21 AM by P. Kannan
seems BillG dosn't rely on his machines :O .. nice to here about BIG people

# re: 5:37 AM, er, 7:37 Dallas time --- ready to go!

Monday, June 09, 2003 12:23 AM by Randy Gregg
I saw your talk on the ASP.NET site and the practical dimensions at TechEd! It was exactly what I needed. I really appreciated the practical approach. I also really liked the concept of doing the slides in ASP.NET, but I have not found anywere where I can download the presentation. It was definitely worth reviewing with my technical team and programming team. Any chance you could send me a copy of the presentation?

Thanks again for taking the time to come to TechEd. You made a difference!

-Randy

# re: TechEd Slides, etc.

Thursday, June 26, 2003 10:55 AM by Jason Gaylord
Thanks for the slides Rob. Do you happen to know if anyone else posted information?

Jason

# re: Writing Projects

Wednesday, July 09, 2003 1:55 PM by Scott Mitchell
So.... what kind of stuff do you cover in there? There's not a synopsis at Amazon.com. Is there a sample chapter online? Can you share more information? When will it be in bookstores?

# re: Writing Projects

Wednesday, July 09, 2003 2:51 PM by Phil
Did you get my email re: caching resources?

# re: Writing Projects

Wednesday, July 09, 2003 4:36 PM by Steven Livingstone
Congratulation Rob. My guess is that the last few chapters were the hardest!?

Found a brief overview here
http://www.bookpool.com/.x/t6occqzunn/sm/073561900X
... but would like to hear more.

btw Rob, the link on your site (rob-howard.net) goes to your site rather than amazon.com. Of course that is assuming you aren't writing you own Amazon ;)

# re: Social Software

Tuesday, July 29, 2003 8:14 AM by John Mandia
Hi Rob,

A quick question. Would it be a lot of work to integrate with rainbow which is also based on IBUYSPY and is built in c#?

www.rainbowportal.net?

If there is something we could do on the rainbow side of things to make integration easier I am sure we could do it and I am sure people who use rainbow would appreciate it.

Many Thanks,

John

# re: Hate writing RegEx? Me too!

Thursday, July 31, 2003 3:14 PM by Eric Gunnerson
You should also look at my Regular Expression Workbench, available at http://www.csharp.net

# re: Hate writing RegEx? Me too!

Friday, August 01, 2003 10:48 AM by Kit George
Hey all, I'm interested to know what you don't like about them:

1) Is it working with the expressions themselves, or is it the class structure we expose that you dislike? If the latter, are there any specifics?

2) Is their functionality missing in managed regex support, that you think should be there?

Thanks,
Kit

# re: Hate writing RegEx? Me too!

Saturday, August 02, 2003 5:21 AM by Dave Wanta
btw, are there any regex tools out there where 1. You enter some text
2. tell it what text you would like to extract or match from text in [1].
3. Have the tool suggest a regex that will match it? This would give you a starting point for a regex, and allow you to tweak it.

thanks,
Dave

# xL8 - Grant Carpenter

Sunday, August 03, 2003 8:14 PM by TrackBack
xL8 - Grant Carpenter

# xL8 - Grant Carpenter

Sunday, August 03, 2003 8:14 PM by TrackBack
xL8 - Grant Carpenter

# re: Social Software

Wednesday, August 06, 2003 11:22 AM by Eric Newton
So, if it doesnt discuss ASP.Net 1.0 or 1.1, what does Rob Howard contribute to it?

hehe JUST KIDDING, I'm sure it'll be a good book.

# re: Hate writing RegEx? Me too!

Saturday, August 09, 2003 10:40 AM by Jason Carr
Hey, Dave Wanta wanted a tool for that stuff, which i made one awhile ago. you can get it on http://www.flacid.org/downloads/regexp-1.0.zip

it's pretty simple, you just type in a regular expression and value, and it will tell you if it matches or not. it does it while you type too, which is cool. i dunno if it's that cool, but give me some more suggestions for additional features or something! :)

jason@flacid.org

# re: 5:37 AM, er, 7:37 Dallas time --- ready to go!

Wednesday, August 20, 2003 8:46 AM by ihiohihih
ugkuhkjhjhjk klhklhlkhkl kjlkjkljklj

# re: Hate writing RegEx? Me too!

Friday, August 22, 2003 9:32 PM by hh
hhh

# re: Hate writing RegEx? Me too!

Friday, August 22, 2003 9:33 PM by gfdgfd
gfdgfdgfd

# "Growing" regular expressions

Wednesday, August 27, 2003 12:21 PM by Richard A Lowe
I've wanted to create a tool that
a) Takes in 1-oxo examples of text you want to match
b) Takes in 1-oxo examples of text you want to NOT match
c) You specify some fuzzy quantifyer of whether you want it to be more 'inclusive' or 'exclusive'.
d) The tool 'grows' some candidate regexs for you.

I guess I would actually try to create such a thing if I believed anyone would use it.

As an alternative, a regex Wizard could be a popular add-in for VS.NET if someone would see fit to create one...

Richard

# re: Hate writing RegEx? Me too!

Thursday, August 28, 2003 2:45 PM by Antonio Cangiano
I agree with you Rob!
I'm writing an article about RegEx, for a magazine, and I've done the same consideration.
Steve's giving us great resources but I want to suggest a useful software:
RegExDesigner (it's freeware)
http://www.sellsbrothers.com/tools/

Moreover I suggest 2 books:

-Mastering Regular Expressions, Second Edition
by Jeffrey, E. F. Friedl

-Visual Basic .NET Text Manipulation Handbook: String Handling and Regular Expressions, By Paul Wilton, Craig McQueen, FranC'ois Liger

Best Regards

# re: Writing Projects

Saturday, August 30, 2003 10:19 AM by Scott Cate
Has anyone got there hands on this book yet? Any feedback?

# re: ASP.NET Forums

Sunday, September 21, 2003 5:53 PM by John Kane
Rob,
Just a follow-up on the two posted feedbacks. Do you use Full-Text Search (FTS)? Indexing Service or SQL Server 2000 FTS?

I'd ask you whether you can solicit some of the search engines to take .aspx extensions seriously .... While I suspect that you cannot do this as much as I assume that you would like to, but the Win2003 Indexing Service uses the HTML IFIlter for .aspx files. The output of Filtreg.exe is ".aspx --> HTML filter (nlhtml.dll)". I can test this on Win2K, if you need this tested.
Regards,
John
email: jt_kane @ hotmail.com (remove spaces)


# Why? Why? Naze (Japanese)?

Monday, September 29, 2003 6:41 AM by Aaron Seet
I loved it the moment I started learning how to use regular expressions. It certainly beats looping through each character of your string to spot a certain condition!

Admittedly it's pretty difficult to learn and I'm far from mastering it but I can't do without its power now!

# re: Hear the buzz? That's PDC...

Thursday, October 09, 2003 2:04 PM by Robert McLaws
My trackback did not register yet...

http://weblogs.asp.net/rmclaws/posts/31295.aspx

# re: Social Software

Tuesday, October 14, 2003 5:33 PM by Rolly Ferolino
Can the forums still be deployed without DotNetNuke? I think a better idea is to work on a integration API so that other applications can loosely hook with the Forums.

# re: ASP.NET Forums

Tuesday, October 21, 2003 2:22 PM by pippo
ciao

# re: PDC: Monday 9:00 AM

Monday, October 27, 2003 11:17 AM by SpiderMan
Cool! Can't wait to see the Whidbey web site. I am not at the PDC now. :( Still hope to be a tester of the Whidbey.

# re: PDC: Monday 9:00 AM

Monday, October 27, 2003 11:38 AM by Scott Mitchell
Here's the view from San Diego: http://scottandjisun.com/saj/images/Fire20031027/

Smoke on the water, fire in the sky! :-)

# re: 11:38 AM ... here we go

Monday, October 27, 2003 1:13 PM by Scott Galloway
Good job Rob, like the book chapters!

# Re: PDC: 10:51 AM -- Preparation

Monday, October 27, 2003 1:15 PM by Jürgen Beck (Germany)
Great Site!!!

On Page "Preview of Web Development with Visual Studio Whidbey" are some pictures missing.

http://www.asp.net/whidbey/whitepapers/VSWhidbeyOverview.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=1

# re: 11:38 AM ... here we go

Monday, October 27, 2003 2:00 PM by Adam
Looks like some of the images are pointing to localhost on the overview page (http://www.asp.net/whidbey/whitepapers/VSWhidbeyOverview.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=1 like http://localhost/whidbey/images/IntellisenseScriptTag_lg.gif)

# re: 11:38 AM ... here we go

Monday, October 27, 2003 3:18 PM by G. Andrew Duthie
Way to go, Rob! 5 hours sitting on the tarmac yesterday, recovering from a cold, and you still get it launched on time. Congrats! :-)

# re: ASP.NET "Whidbey" Database Cache Invalidation

Monday, October 27, 2003 4:03 PM by Chris Martin
Excellent!!!

# re: ASP.NET "Whidbey" Database Cache Invalidation

Monday, October 27, 2003 6:01 PM by Ben Richardson
Wicked.

# ASP.NET Database Cache Invalidation

Monday, October 27, 2003 7:00 PM by TrackBack

# re: ASP.NET "Whidbey" Database Cache Invalidation

Tuesday, October 28, 2003 12:14 AM by Aaron
Would this be useful for caching at the business layer as well?

# ASP.NET

Saturday, November 01, 2003 3:49 PM by TrackBack

# re: Borland Developer's Conference

Monday, November 03, 2003 7:20 PM by Rob Rentz
Hey Rob -

Come to Pittsburgh! I'd love to attend.

Rob Rentz

# re: Borland Developer's Conference

Monday, November 03, 2003 10:36 PM by Karthik K
Any chance of running these developer conferences in India? i would love to attend

thanks

# re: Borland Developer's Conference

Tuesday, November 04, 2003 4:59 AM by Simon
Any chance of a few roadshows in the UK please?

# re: ASP.NET Roadshow kick-off

Wednesday, November 05, 2003 10:40 AM by Bill Evjen
Awesome! Can't wait for the roadshow to come to St. Louis in December!!!!

# re: ASP.NET Roadshow kick-off

Wednesday, November 05, 2003 10:47 AM by Brian Goldfarb
woohoo!!

# re: ASP.NET Roadshow kick-off

Wednesday, November 05, 2003 7:27 PM by Brian Desmond
See you in Chicago!

# re: ASP.NET "Whidbey" Provider Model

Friday, November 07, 2003 10:22 AM by Thomas Tomiczek
A NEAT feature, indeed. How smart, Rob, is the caching architecture ABOVE the provider? I know this is a bad topic (actually), I am just ooking forward, and there area ton of negatives with caching above the provider.

While I love the model, though, just to let you know, I consider the providers and managment to be absolutly sub par from what I have seen. I have my own standard system for this already (which I will implement as provider, naturally), and we handle things like TIME LIMITED memberships to groups - something I found more than needed for websites. Someone has acces to some areas for one year, I want it to be ONE YEAR straight. Caching would step onto my toes here :-)

# re: ASP.NET "Whidbey" Provider Model

Friday, November 07, 2003 10:27 AM by Rob Howard
You've actually touched on the very point of why we have providers. We don't know what all the specific needs/behaviors, etc. will be. We wanted to give developers something that they could extend (or replace) with their own behaviors. So when you say 'Membership in a group for a year' that's not a problem at all. You could simply derive from our default and override methods to enforce that behavior -- same thing, for example, with enforcing a certain password format, locking the account after a certain number of failed logins, etc. ;)

As for caching. We currently do not cache anything at the provider layer (I assume you mean caching the data). We will be looking to integrate the new database caching functionality with some of our providers where it makes sense. That way we could intelligently cache data accessed through the provider and invalidate the data when the data in the database changes -- again all behaviors that you can change though.

# re: ASP.NET "Whidbey" Provider Model

Friday, November 07, 2003 10:51 AM by Thomas Tomiczek
::You've actually touched on the very point of
::why we have providers.

I know :-) Heck, I can hardly wait to install the DVD's that are on the way (my old alphas made "not too well" during a move) and put a secondary website onto it.

Terrific job.

::As for caching. We currently do not cache
::anything at the provider layer

Well, I dont care about the prvider layer, but about the layer ABOVE it. In need you to call into the provider on EVERY page :-) Well, maybe :-) My current membership system is pretty "optimal" in this way - we go into the Authenticated event and reuse an existent principal object (if it is still there AND still valid), otherwise we hit the business layer (means at least once every 5 minutes). I would not like any caching that makes people go into pages for which their right did expire 5 seconds ago :-) Yes, crazy, I know :-)

# re: ASP.NET "Whidbey" Provider Model

Friday, November 07, 2003 11:04 AM by Scott Watermasysk
I have also implemented a set of providers in .Text. See http://scottwater.com/blog/posts/10579.aspx

-Scott

# re: ASP.NET "Whidbey" Provider Model

Monday, November 10, 2003 7:15 AM by colin mcdonald
Not sure if this is in ASP.NET "Whidbey", but it would be nice if the "add" node had an optional attribute called "url" that referenced the URL of the provider which resided remotely.

Then, if you're using a Factory to instantiate your providers, you could get either a local provider or remote provider.

We're doing something like this at our company and this gives the ability to seperate our logical layers into tiers quite easily. .NET remoting is a wonderful thing ;-)

# re: ASP.NET "Whidbey" Database Cache Invalidation

Monday, November 10, 2003 7:24 AM by Johan Danforth
Yay, that's just great! I've been using a bunch of more or less complicated ways to invalidate cached data, this will make things WAY easier for sure!

# re: Design trade-offs

Wednesday, November 12, 2003 9:35 AM by Steve
Rob, I think if placed in your shoes I would have made many of the same decisions. It is always a struggle balancing the complexity/simplicity of any design. While its nice to make it the most extendible, flexible thing in the world you (Mr. Developer not Rob Howard) run into the risk of making it too complex for the majority of users to use. I for one would love to see the most extensible/flexible design there for me to use, and perhaps have it hidden through a nice neat facade for the basic user who just wants to get it working, without worrying about the details.

# re: Design trade-offs

Wednesday, November 12, 2003 9:50 AM by Justin Burtch
2 Things:
I know it is only a partial fix but:
using Groups = System.Web.Security.Roles may help him a little with his naming issue. Secondly, I think it was Don Box who said that runtime swapping of components in a panacea. It can work well but in many cases but it is a slippery slope. I bring this up because it doesn't hurt my head to throw exceptions from methods in an interface depending on the provider. When my company writes software, we have a target environment (whether that means we use AD or SQL providers for our membership functionality depends on project and customer.) If we want to support both, it means extra testing and investigations of differences. In data access technologies, I've never expected to be able to swap Oracle for SQL Server for Access and have zero problems. Same goes with membership, security, etc. Thanks for the flexibility of choosing providers and try to keep their use as seamless as possible.

# re: Design trade-offs

Wednesday, November 12, 2003 10:07 AM by Michael
I agree with the slippery slope argument but I would still prefer to see interfaces broken up a little so that it is possible to test for support of a feature that is not universal. I guess its all a moot point now given that they've moved to an abstract class model, but I would hope that they have a property along the lines of "IsGetPasswordSupported". It seems just wrong to use exception handling to glen this info.

# re: Design trade-offs

Wednesday, November 12, 2003 10:08 AM by James Shaw
I couldn't agree more with you Rob. Beautiful OO design can be extremely hard for developers to use sometimes and can quickly turn into a maintenance nightmare.

# re: Design trade-offs

Wednesday, November 12, 2003 11:25 AM by Jesse Ezell
Follow up:
http://weblogs.asp.net/jezell/posts/37133.aspx

# re: Design trade-offs

Wednesday, November 12, 2003 1:13 PM by Amon
I must respectfully disagree with Rob's statement "it places emphasis on who builds the software not on who uses the software"; not just for argument's sake.

Since we're talking about frameworks and programming here, "using" the software shouldn't be an issue. Or did I miss the point?

Shouldn't MS be taking a "what do we need to provide developers with that allows them the most productivity and flexibility" so they will want to utilize the MS technologies?

If you had taken the more granular OO approach you mention, wouldn't you have still provided a default functionality using higher level classes? This would still allow us to extend/override the IUser, IEncryption, IValidateUser interfaces/classes?



# Getting on the Provider bandwagon

Thursday, November 13, 2003 12:08 PM by TrackBack

# re: Design trade-offs

Sunday, November 16, 2003 1:38 PM by Rick Strahl
One comment on this is: You can always build higher level less flexible APIs ontop of the more complex implementation and publish both but you can't do it the other way around.

While I'm a big proponent of keeping things simple, I think layering is almost always the best way to have your cake and be able to eat it too :-}...

# re: ASP.NET "Whidbey" Database Cache Invalidation

Monday, November 17, 2003 2:54 AM by M. Rajesh
Hi

I used this sample on windows 2003 Server and Alpha version of Web Developer. I used the cmd aspnet_sqldependencycache to set the cache on the table orders in the database northwind. but it says unable to set the cache. what could be the reason.

Regards

M. Rajesh

# re: Don't use stored procedures yet? Must be suffering from NIHS (Not Invented Here Syndrome)

Monday, November 17, 2003 4:14 PM by Jeff Gonzalez
If you use parameterized queries instead of strictly ad-hoc sql statements, there is no performance benefit in using stored procedures, at least in Sql Server 2000.

Sql Server 2000 caches parameterized queries as well as stored procedures.

# re: Don't use stored procedures yet? Must be suffering from NIHS (Not Invented Here Syndrome)

Monday, November 17, 2003 4:18 PM by Brian Noyes
Bravo. Amen. Exactly the mantra I preach in my data access classes and every time I talk on data access. Great summary of the reasons. Glad to my same convictions re-affirmed by people who know a lot more than I do.

# re: Don't use stored procedures yet? Must be suffering from NIHS (Not Invented Here Syndrome)

Monday, November 17, 2003 4:32 PM by Mathew Nolton
too funny. i have seen nihs in action. if it isn't stored procedures it would be whether or not you put a curly brace following your for statement on the same line or directly beneath it.
-Mathew Nolton

# re: Don't use stored procedures yet? Must be suffering from NIHS (Not Invented Here Syndrome)

Monday, November 17, 2003 5:33 PM by Andrew
Thanks Rob,
Nice post.
In regards to NIHS (pronouced like nice, but it isn't) : Not having invented a database, they should be using text files.


The truth doesn't change, it just gets expressed differently to different people at different times.

# re: Don't use stored procedures yet? Must be suffering from NIHS (Not Invented Here Syndrome)

Monday, November 17, 2003 5:34 PM by JosephCooney
I love stored procedures for all the reasons you list, and couldn't really imagine writing data-driven applications without them. Usually there are trade-offs when you choose one development technique over another, but as far I'm concerned when it comes to using stored procedures there is NO downside. Applications can be build more secuirely, are easier to maintain, and typically perform better.

# re: Don't use stored procedures yet? Must be suffering from NIHS (Not Invented Here Syndrome)

Monday, November 17, 2003 6:46 PM by peter
You are completely missing the point.

The main bottleneck in our industry is programmer productivity. When you built ASP.NET you were not thinking in having the best performant platform but the most powerful and easy to use. Developers are giving up performance for productivity. The CLR is about that.

Stored procedures are hard to debug, hard to deploy, unflexible (try building a parameterized query system with stored procedures), and bad for a lot of operations (try encrypting or doing string handling).

Granted, CLR stored procedures will make this easier, and it's a step in the right direction.

For security, the way to go in windows is COM+ with integrated security. It's the most secure way, there are not connection strings, etc.

By leading MS developers to use stored procs, you are leading them to Java, where the standard practice is not to use stored procedures, which is much easier. Of course you could lie to yourself and think that Java apps don't scale or don't perform, but even if that's true, it does not seem to have impact in Java adoption.

Is PHP scalable and performant? Do PHP users care?

# re: Don't use stored procedures yet? Must be suffering from NIHS (Not Invented Here Syndrome)

Monday, November 17, 2003 7:11 PM by Rob Howard
Peter -

> not thinking in having the best performant platform
I'm obviously a little biased here <g> but ASP.NET is the best performing platform.

> hard to debug, hard to deploy, unflexible
Yes and much of this is being addressed in SQL Server 'Yukon' which allows you to run CLR code in the database. But just because something is diffcult is not an excuse, especially when the benefit outweighs the cost. For example, I hate going to the dentist - it usually hurts; takes up more time than I want to give up; and sometimes I have to pay money for all of this 'fun'! Does that mean I shouldn't go?

> bad for a lot of operations
Exactly. They weren't designed for encrypting or string handling. They are designed for working with data. Believe it or not they are exceptionally good at doing it too <g>. I think if you read through the entire post (or at least the last paragraph) this is exactly what I said.

> leading them to Java
Is this a quote from star wars? From anger comes fear, from fear comes... I'm still trying to parse this ;)

# are you not using stored procs

Monday, November 17, 2003 11:50 PM by TrackBack

# re: Don't use stored procedures yet? Must be suffering from NIHS (Not Invented Here Syndrome)

Tuesday, November 18, 2003 2:25 AM by Frans Bouma
"There are also internal performance benefits to SQL Server for using stored procedures vs. ad-hoc SQL script. When stored procedures are used SQL Server can cache or pre-compile the ‘execution plan’ that it uses to execute the SQL vs. having to recalculate the execution plan on each request – would you recompile your business logic class on each request? "
This is bull. SQLServer does not precompile stored procedures. It keeps the execution plan for ad-hoc queries AND stored procedures in the cache, there is NO difference between the two. The only advantage a stored procedure CAN have in this regard is that a stored procedure has a solid signature, thus the execution plan is easier found in the cache. The execution plan for the ad-hoc query CAN take a slighter longer time to find back. If you don't believe me, check out the BOL of SqlServer ("Execution Plan Caching and Reuse".

The reason SQLServer does this is because the optimizer at runtime can now optimize the query based on statistics that are very recent.

It's always a good laugh to see people defend stored procedures for SqlServer and using the "they're precompiled" argument. They're not. And in a lot of situations, they're slower as well, simply because you have to code your stored procedure to handle optional arguments because the WHERE predicates in a SELECT query inside a stored proc have to be flexible: e.g. you have to be able to filter on 1, 2, 3, or maybe 4 fields and all combinations. Good luck defining those.

And no, that's not exceptional. That kind of queries are common.

# re: Don't use stored procedures yet? Must be suffering from NIHS (Not Invented Here Syndrome)

Tuesday, November 18, 2003 2:52 AM by Ian Ringrose
The problem with Stored Procedures is that they need rewriting for each database, most SQL statement can be written so that works on all important rdbms. As an ISV we have customers with both SQL server and Oracle, next week a sales person may sell our software to someone with DB2!

All of our programmers can cope with writing simple SQL statements, should we also make them learn TSQL and PLSQL, and whatever DB2 uses?

I have found that the speed up from Stored Procedures is not as great as then what I can get by spending the time doing a bit of performance work with ANTS (a very nice profiler) on the complete system. We DO have 2 Stored Procedures, as the profiling showed that Data Access was the bottle neck in that case, and we could not solve it by rewriting the SQL.

Now if you provided a TYPE SAFE, database in-depended way of calling store procedures, and a compilers that took my SQL and converted it into Stored Procedures I would be interested. But why not just provide “Imbedded” SQL that is processed by a pre-processor before the C# compiler, like SQL was done with ‘C’ before ODBC made everything so hard. The pre-processor’s could also be pointed at a database, so would give an error if I misspelled the name of a columns at COMPILE TYPE, in these “advanced” days, I do not get a error when a misspelled the name of a column or stored proc until RUN TIME, that is not very good…

If I was writing “in house” software then never needed to be sold to a customer, I would use stored procedures. Most software in the world is “in house” single company but not all.


Email: ringi at Bigfoot dot com

# re: Don't use stored procedures yet? Must be suffering from NIHS (Not Invented Here Syndrome)