Spacehamster's Blog

A useful Entity Data Modelling Tutorial

One of the things I really liked about .NET 3.5 was the new LINQ to SQL framework. My interpretation was that LINQ provided a straightforward way to access your database tables, views and stored procedures using a first-order query language. No need to use DataSets, DataTables or ADO.NET connections - just setup your context and away you go!

I wasn't too enamoured with the Entity Data Modelling framework. I found it a bit difficult to use, and clunky to implement. Fortunately, Mendhak at CodeGuru has written what I think is a very useful tutorial that covers the basics of Entity Data Modelling. The very last page has a very useful summary clearly outlining the differences between LINQ to SQL and EDM which I found quite illuminating. EDM is used for Enterprise-level projects, LINQ to SQL is used for Rapid Application Deployment. Obviously the latter is more useful for my little project than the former.

Screw it, let's do it.

So why bother with any of this programming and development stuff I was talking about in my last post? There are several reasons -

• if I want to continue in a career in IT then I need to make sure that I'm up-to-date with the latest technology.
• I've spent far too much time admiring the successes my colleagues have had and I've lacked the self-confidence to emulate their success.

 However, just recently I've had my own project successfully come to fruition. After so many years of trying and often failing to develop applications and get them into production, it's really satisfying to finally get some "runs on the board".

I've been reading one of Richard Branson's books - "Screw it, Let's do it". What struck me is that he's learned more from his failures then he has from his successes. I always thought that successful people always got things done perfectly everytime - apparently I was wrong. In fact, the most successful people can have a million failures behind them, but their triumphs are born from learning from those missteps.  My family believes that if you don't do everything perfectly the first time, then that makes you a failure. With that kind of attitude I'm surprised that anyone in my family is successful at anything.

All these events have made me aware that if I want to become a good Developer, then I've got to be prepared to work hard and get my hands dirty, and not be afraid to make mistakes and learn from them. It took a few regular stops and starts before I was finally able to get this web application developed. Hopefully, learning new IT skills in my spare time will help me become more successful on a more regular basis.

If I have any time, and feel that it's relevant, then I might even post some relevant articles here on my blog. Who knows? Perhaps other people might find these articles and links useful too.

Visual Studio 2010 - A .NET Odyssey?

When I'm on holiday I normally spend the entire time either sleeping, watching movies and television, or playing computer games. However, after several discussions with my work colleagues I've decided to brush up my programming skills in my spare time. To paraphrase my colleague Daniel - "Pick a programming language you like and stick with it.". So I've decided to choose the .NET Development platform.

Why .NET? Because I use it extensively at work, and because there are certain areas in .NET that interest me -

• LINQ: I've already had a go at LINQ, which essentially turns database transactions into a first-order query programming language.
• EDM: I had an unpleasant learning experience with Entity Data Modelling in .NET 3.5, but I have heard rumors that EDM in .NET 4.0 may have improved.
• Silverlight: I also want to take a much closer look at Silverlight (Microsoft's equivalent of Flash), which seems to be getting a lot of attention at the moment. 
• Web Services: I think this area is one of the most important to look at, as it seems every man and his dog is using web service SOAP/REQUEST calls nowadays.

I've also tried looking at some third-party applications - Entity Spaces and VistaDB. Unfortunately, it didn't go well - apparently the Trial versions of Entity Spaces and VistaDB don't play well together. Needless to say I'll be sticking with EDM/LINQ and SQL Server 2008 for the foreseeable future.

My goal is to develop an application that a user can use to search for a title they own (either a book, DVD or software) on Amazon.com, and then store the information in a database. It's a pretty simple application that can potentially covers several areas -

• Web Services: Use SOAP/REQUEST calls to the Product Advertising API.
• EDM/LINQ: Saves and retrieves titles to and from the database.
• Silverlight(?): Used to design the GUI

Okay, so this has probably been done many times before by many developers. The point is that I've never done it before, and I'll never become a good Developer unless I'm prepared get my hands dirty and learn from my mistakes as well as my successes.

Jetstar on my no-fly list

Reading about incidents like the one involving Jetstar refusing to allow a blind couple onboard the plane with their guide dog, or their poor handling of Mesha Sendyk, make me grateful that I don't have to fly with Jetstar on a regular basis. If I have to fly anywhere domestically, both I and my brother are inclined to use Virgin Blue. They might not be as cheap, but my experiences with them have always been positive.

Alright, granted that Virgin Blue have had their fair share of snafus as well. But I get the impression they handle situations better. And I'm not entirely sure what the story was with Mesha Sendyk. Was she really as obnoxious as Jetstar claims? The witness statements don't seem to back that up. And just how clueless would you have to be to not allow a blind couple on board an airplane when there's no legal reason to ban them? I'm well aware that people will argue "there must be more to this story...", and we should give Jetstar the benefit of a doubt. What's clear to me is that the culture at Jetstar values profit over customer service. I refuse to fly with an airline that's quite happy to take my money but spit in my face at the same time.

Whither thou Lookup Set?

I tried to attach an image to a thread I started in the HP TRIM Forums. Unfortunately, the submission fails when images are attached to posts, so I'm forced to display it here -

I'm not sure what the correct definition for this is in HP TRIM. My colleague calls it a 'Lookup Set', but it looks like a dropdown list to me.

Firstly, congratulations to Tony Abbott on being the new leader of the Australian Liberal Party. I'm assuming my mother and father will both be delighted. As for me, I disagree with both Tony Abbott's social policies and his pro-Workchoices employment policies. So I am now less likely to vote for the Liberals now than I was at anyo other time in the last 2 years.

There's no such thing as a Silver Bullet

At work, we're currently in the midst of searching for a viable Development Platform that we can use to develop our applications.  At the moment we're using .NET 2.0. We've also looked at Ruby on Rails (no, really) and Grails (aka Groovy on Rails). Grails does rely heavily on convention, but it can do 70-80% of what we need. However, as one of my colleagues observed, when you ask Grails to do something unconventional, that's when things tends to go "off the rails" (pun intended).

At the behest of another of my colleagues (thanks Michael!), I've also been looking at PHP. I tried to learn PHP 5 years ago, but gave up out of frustration. 5 years on, and I think PHP has improved greatly. You can use it to design object classes, and interface with web services. Thus far, I would rate PHP as a viable alternative to .NET, but I don't think it's superior to .NET.

If the objective of this exercise is to find a development platform to which we can feed our requirements in one end and produce the code at the other end, I don't believe that we will succeed.

I suspect that opinion will not be popular amongst some of my fellow developers. However, people with real experience in the IT Industry have already arrived at the same conclusion as I have.

What happens is that some kind of vendor of programming technologies has come up with some product they are claiming makes programming easier.

...

None of them believed Frederick P. Brooks, in 1987: “Not only are there no silver bullets now in view, the very nature of software makes it unlikely that there will be any - no inventions that will do for software productivity, reliability, and simplicity what electronics, transistors, and large-scale integration did for computer hardware.... I believe the hard part of building software to be the specification, design, and testing of this conceptual construct, not the labor of representing it and testing the fidelity of the representation.... If this is true, building software will always be hard. There is inherently no silver bullet.

I totally agree with Mr. Brooks. THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A SILVER BULLET FOR SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT. It'd be lovely if there really was a Development platform where you could turn a handle and out pops your application. Such a thing only exists in Science Fiction. In the real world, designing a good software application requires more discipline, dedication and hard work than that.

A slap in the face for the True Believers

I confess to not being a fanatic about Aussie Rules, but I totally respect the game, its traditions and its passionate fans. So when I read an article that claims the AFL are selling out the True Believers for Corporate profits, I'm very disappointed.

It is injustice on a mass scale - tens of thousands of loyal, passionate footy club members who turn up to watch their teams every week, through good times and wretched, denied entry on the one day for which some have been waiting most of their lives.

In their place at the 'G will be tens of thousands of corporate blow-ins, freeloaders and other ''theatre-goers'' who won't particularly care about the result, who would never show up at a regular Saints-Cats game, but who have the cash or connections to jump the queue on grand final day.

No other major public event or institution in this city has been so comprehensively hijacked by commercial interests to the detriment of so many people - and of the occasion itself.

My mother invited me to a Quiz Night held by the local Table Tennis Association. Unfortunately it was held on the same night as the Collingwood vs Adelaide Crows AFL Match. During the last Quarter there was a mass migration from the Club room to the Bar to see the dying minutes of the game. The enthusiasm was infectious, and it really was a great example of how sport can unite everyone, regardless of their background. It's dissapointing to see passionate supporters such as these being sold-out on Grand Final Day.

The Black Dog haunts the most unexpected people

I should disclose that I probably had depression during my teenage years, and I did seriously contemplate suicide at that point in my life. The only thing that dissuaded me from killing myself was an old adage from one of my favourite Star Trek characters Dr. McCoy: "It takes more guts to go on living, than to just give up and die.".

Looking back on it, I think my affliction stemmed from the same place as any other adolescent: A search for identity and for meaning in life. Not having any friends at all didn't help. I didn't even have a girlfriend because I thought I was so ugly and stupid. I've been dancing with the Black Dog throught most of my life, and it's only during the last few years that I've finally been able to resolve these issues. What's amazing is just how far I've come as a person once I was able to move past all those false assumptions I made about myself.

So it always surprises me when I discover who has been affected by depression. The last person I would've expected was Liberal Factional Warrior Andrew Robb -

Robb showed his warrior qualities on Tuesday in a party room  battle against hard-liners determined to lock the Coalition into opposing an emissions trading scheme no matter what.

His speech was calm, reasoned and forceful. He gave Wilson Tuckey a whack. Colleagues were full of praise afterwards. What they did not know was that, before he rose to speak, Robb's stomach was churning and he was in a funk, thinking: ``I can't do this.''

Later that day he went to see Turnbull and unburdened himself of a secret. This strong, talented politician _ touted as a possible leadership alternative to Turnbull in some newspapers just last month _ suffers from a depressive illness.

One reason why I was never able to resolve my own problems until recently is due to my own family's perceptions that mental illness is a personal embarrassment rather than a genuine affliction that needed to be treated by Professionals.  So it's encouraging to see that even a leading Politician like Andrew Robb can admit that he needs help.

So is the Coalition denying reality too?

I don't make the mistake of lumping in the Coalition with the Republicans. The former are aa traditional Australian Conservative party - pro Big Business, anti-immigration etc... The Republicans a (by my standards) several different shades of crazy.

At least, until I read this article in the Herald this morning -

The Opposition attack stumbled late yesterday when the shadow treasurer, Joe Hockey, accused the G20 of being dominated by left-wingers, despite it including nations such as France, Germany, Italy and Canada, all of which have right-wing Governments.

So is an ultra-Conservative Government in Italy a Left-winger by our standards? If that's the case, then I'd start to worry about the collective sanity of the Coalition.

Or at least Joe Hockey.