NOTE: ServerBeach may have 64-bit servers, but they are not yet running on Windows Server 2003 x64, which means they are not running at their full potential. They were also very rude to me when I confronted them about the issue. I would not recommend buying their 64-bit servers at this time, it would just be a waste of money.
I just got a very interesting e-mail today. I've been with ServerBeach for 3 years now, and they're a fantastic company. They were acquired by a huge hosting firm last year, and have continued to do an outstanding job. Now, they've opened a new datacenter on the west coast, and are now offering, among other things, 64bit Athlon servers. You can get a dual proc 64bit server with 2GB RAM for $299/month! That's INSANE. At that price, I could move my database to a 64-bit machine dirt cheap.
ServerBeach has always been great to me, and you should definitely check them out. Click here to find out more. If you sign up through this link, we both get $200!
I've been working on building a really great web application using ASP.NET 2.0 over the past three months, and I needed a really great tool to make building the site easier. I tested a bunch of other tools (though I won't name them cause I'll get flamed), and I just wasn't satisfied. Not wanting to have to write any more code than I had to, I wanted to be able to design a platform that would allow me to easily change things as the requirements got more complex.
Enter CodeSmith. I'd heard a bunch of people rave about it, but I never really gave it a shot before. So I installed it, and as I started my trial, there was XHEO's Licensing component to taunt me. You see, I love XHEO's unreleased OR system. But unreleased = unsupported, and Paul's gung-ho on his anti-ILDASM technology, so I'm not holding my breath.
Anyways, I got it going, and was impressed. The IDE feels a little childish to me, and I was rather pissed that it didn't support VS2005 or .NET 2.0 language options, but oh well. The learning curve on the API was a tad steep too, but I picked it up pretty quickly. Soon, I had generated all of my SPROCS with ease.
But then my head started spinning when I thought of all the data access code I'd have to write. So I tried out some of the built-in templates, but I didn't like their access architecture. I'm a huge fan of the Provider Model, and I don't like data access code in the same class as the object properties. Yeah, it's nice to be able to call Object.Save(), but's it's just as nice to call ObjectManager.Save(object).
So I built myself a template to generate an ObjectManager. Then I wrote a template to generate all the Object Managers. Then I wrote a template to generate an object. Then I wrote a template to generate all the objects. Then I wrote a template to generate all the SPROCS, managers, and objects. And when I was done, I generated over 10,000 lines of code in just a few seconds. Not bad for a hard week's work.
In short, CodeSmith helped me do in a week what would have taken a team of 3 developers a month to accomplish. And I know that every single line of code is written to MY standards... something which is usually extremely tedious. I can't believe I waited this long to try it, and now I don't think I'll ever be able to code without it.
Maybe now I'll have time for all those little side projects... ;)