Well, today i have uploaded the Retina.NET alpha3 into the GotDotNet workspace, including source code, binaries, documentation and a new sample application (the well known ASP.NET sample from Microsoft "IbuySpy Portal" ported to Retina.NET).

This version includes the following:

*- Several bug-fixes and other small changes in Retina.Core.
*- Fixes in the MetadataCache to support loading of circular entity references.
*- Fixes in the transaction management to allow manual control of transaction lifetime.
*- All EntityPersist classes now generates fully qualified column names in queries.
*- A new demo application is included that is a port of the well known Microsoft ASP.NET sample IbuySpy.

The alpha2 release went very well, i'm pleased with the results obtained and the community response. The alpha2 bits were downloaded 77 times from the GotDotNet workspace that is counting now 40 members. I hope that in following releases, as stability and funcionallity gets better, this numbers increase.

The next release (BETA1) will focus on more unit testing, better documentation, code stabilization and feature completion.

For BETA1 I hope to have the following things completed:
*- Fixes in the SQL generation based on Criteria objects to use Field names and not Column names as it do now.
*- Fix the FilterValue property to some less akward.
*- Make some work in supporting better inheritance.
*- Support for identity PK generated in the database.
*- Loading mapping configuration from XML files or embedded resources.
*- One or two surprises!

Of course, if anyone is interested in working on some other area (such as making work another dataStore or anything else), please let me know.

Retina.NET workspace can be found at GotDotNet, and you are welcome to stop by if you like.

Best regards,

Andrés G Vettori
MCSE/MCSD/MCT
Leader of the C# Community of the Microsoft Users Group Argentina

3 Comments

• Mischa Kroon said Wednesday, November 17, 2004 3:00:00 PM

  Lots of docs and samples, might play around with this one for a while :)
  
  Very nicely packaged for an alpha :)

• David Hayden said Monday, November 22, 2004 1:28:00 PM

  I read your tutorial on GDN and the way you handle contraints, triggers, and persistence seems very elegant. Retina.NET looks very promising and I look forward to it going beta.

• Andrés G Vettori said Monday, November 22, 2004 5:08:00 PM

  It's very exciting to read such positive comments about Retina.NET, and give me energy to continue with the initial idea that originated the project: "to create an easy to use and very powerful object persistence library", and i think we are getting closer and closer with every release.
  
  Thanks a lot guys, and welcome to the growing Retina.NET Community.
  
  Andrés.