LINQ and Entity Framework Posts for 10/1/2008+

Note: This post is updated daily or more frequently, depending on the availability of new articles.

•• Update 10/5/2008: EF, Misc.

• Update 10/3/2008: EF, LINQ to SQL, LINQ, Astoria, SSDS additions. Minor updates 10/4/2008 8:30 AM PDT

Entity Framework and Entity Data Model (EF/EDM)

•• Matthieu Mezil contends in his ADO.NET Data Services Hooking POC post of 10/5/2008 that “sometimes, you need to develop your own entity classes which encapsulate your EF ones … [to] support all cases.” However, Matthieu says that “the flow between the Server and the DB isn’t optimized” and provides a pair of SQL Server 2008 data (ADONETDataServicesHookingPOC.mdf) and log (ADONETDataServicesHookingPOC_log.ldf) files from CodePlex as a proof of concept (POC).

•• Kristofer Andersson’s Huagati DBML/EDMX Tools extend the automated Update LINQ to SQL Documentation from Database feature to Update ADO.NET Entity Data Model Documentation from Database. This new menu choice corrects the problem Kris notes in his Tools - Part 5 - Add-ins - Documentation features in Entity Framework vs Linq-to-SQL post of 9/5/2008: The appearance of “There are no comments for [name] in the schema” as the value of the Documentation property of each EntityType and its members. The option automatically imports description data and adds index informaton from table metadata in the same manner as for LINQ to SQL data sources.

You can download a free trial version of v1.36.3198.30279 of 10/3/2008 from here.

• Julie Lerman reports in her Technology Deathmatch: LINQ to SQL vs. Entity Framework post of 10/3/2008 that Alex Thissen and Paul Gielens will be sparring partners in the smackdown at the Software Developer Network’s (SDN) Software Development Conference 10/6-7/2008 in Noordwijkerhout (near Amsterdam and Schiphol Airport.)

Hopefully, Alex and Paul will deliver the session in English and Julie will record it.

Update: Julie says the session will be in Dutch. Shucks.

• Dennis van der Stelt delivers UK developers’ choice of database access technology on 10/1/2008. See the “LINQ to SQL” section.

• Ido Flatow cautions developers about slowly executing queries with related entities in his Entity Framework generated queries - look out post of 10/1/2008.

Julie Lerman announces on 10/2/2008 Programming Entity Framework available as a RoughCut within the next few days. She promised to post a linq when the first few chapters are available for downloading.

Mohammad Mosa demonstrates associations between twp base entities and shows you how to filter end properties to return specific type (subentity) in Inheritance and Associations with Entity Framework Part 3 of 10/1/2008.

Matthieu Mezil explains how to return the employees reporting to a specific supervisor when employee and supervisor records are in the same table in EF: how to do a recursive include? of 10/1/2008.

LINQ to SQL

• Roger Alsing has implemented Jimmy Nilsson’s Workspace pattern with LINQ and will use NWorkspace in what appears to be a project for the Swedish government, according to NWorkspace / Linq Workspace Followup of 10/3/2008.

In a comment to an earlier post, DDD - NWorkspace Linq experiment of July 3, 2008, Roger says:

At the moment the project is just a small experiment so there is not much to show to the world. But I will continue to fiddle with it now during my vacation, so if I feel confident enough in it I will make it public. But for now it will just be my own toy.

He must be confident of NWorkspace if “a large portion of every Swedish citizens that turn 18 will pass through this system,” so it’s time to post the code. 

• Dennis van der Stelt expresses surprise about the developers’ choice of LINQ to SQL (18%)and Entity Framework (13%) as the database access technology they would choose if starting a project on 1/1/2009.

In his Who is actually using LINQ or LINQ to SQL? post of 10/1/2008, Dennis quotes a recent Microsoft UK MSDN Flash newsletter. The fact that 41% plan to use ADO.NET (Commands, DataReaders, DataSets, etc.) is no surprise but the low ranking of other O/RMs is a shock to me: 7% Alternative ORM – Nhibernate, LLBLGen, EntitySpaces, etc.

I’d certainly like to see a similar survey for the US.

Miguel de Icaza’s DbLINQ, LINQ to Databases and Mono post of 10/2/2008 links to Atushi Enomoto’s Mono's Linq to SQL effort based on DBLinq post of the same date, which describes a LINQ to SQL clone that supports multiple RDBMSs.

LINQ to SQL was designed to do the same, but the Data Programmability group restricted the RTM version of SQL Server-only.

Mike Taulty binds a LINQ to SQL Data source to a WPF master/details form with WPF DataGrids in his DataGrid - Master/Details post of 10/1/2008.

LINQ to Objects, LINQ to XML, et al.

• Jim Wooley reports in ThinqLinq on Deep Fried Bytes of 10/03/2008 that Keith and Woody interviewed him for Episode 14: LINQ’ing the Future of Development with Jim Wooley (MP3).

Paul Stovell starts writing documentation for his Bindable LINQ component in his Bindable LINQ: What is Bindable LINQ? post of 10/1/2008.

Paul Stovell’s Bindable LINQ: F# is Overhyped post of 10/1/2008 reflects his preference functional reactive programming over F#.

Beth Massie promotes her latest article in the October 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine - Dynamic Data Entry With XML Literals of 10/1/2008.

LinqMaster tells you How to Use LINQ OfType Standard Query Operator on 10/1/2008.

Garvin Clark observes in his IBM, Sun, Microsoft sink differences on VMs The Register article of 10/1/2008:

Among those heading to Sun's offices [for the JVM Language Summit] were computer languages expert and Microsoft architect Erik Meijer - who helped create the Language Integrated Query (LINQ) and Microsoft's experimental Volta tools language.

See the “Miscellaneous” section for more about Volta’s recent disappearance from Windows Live Labs.

ADO.NET Data Services (Astoria)

• Phani Raj’s DataServiceContext: Detect if there are pending changes post of 10/3/2008 explains Astoria’s DataServiceContext object and its two collections, Entities and Links, that you can test for state and determine if they have changes pending.

• Mike Flasko said in slide 9 of his ADO.NET Data Services for the Web (a.k.a. Project "Astoria") presentation at Remix UK 08 that an ASP.NET DataSourceControl for ADO.NET Data Services is coming “in the future.”

Mike insists on the using term LINQ for ADO.NET Data Services for the Astoria pseudo-implementation (string-based LINQ syntax) instead of LINQ to Astoria or (my favorite) LINQ to REST. Hopefully, the new control will be named RestDataSourceControl rather than AdoDotNetDataServicesDataSourceControl.

• Eric Nelson’s Entity Framework and Data Services in one slide – a work in progress crams a diagram of ADO.NET Data Sources and its Entity Framework data source onto a single PowerPoint. Looks like a good start to me, but an arrow or two is missing and some seem to me to point in the wrong direction or the connectors should be double-headed.

Shawn Wildermuth describes problems with Silverlight and ADO.NET Data Service Operations on 10/1/2008.

ASP.NET Dynamic Data (DD)

Scott Hanselman intends to prevent “confusion about how ASP.NET WebForms, MVC and Dynamic Data all fit together” with his detailed Plug-In Hybrids: ASP.NET WebForms and ASP.MVC and ASP.NET Dynamic Data Side By Side post of 10/1/2008. If you’re into MVC and/or DD, this post is a must-read.

Scott Guthrie returns to link blogging with October 2nd Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Dynamic Data of 10/2/2008.

DLPanther continues to hype his forthcoming ASP.NET Dynamic Data, The Data Revolution is here! series with a 10/1/2008 post about prerequisites. Where’s the beef?

SQL Server Data Services (SSDS)

• Bob Cringley’s Data Debasement: Cloud computing will change the way we look at databases column of 10/3/2008 takes the position that large-scale in-memory databases of the future will run on top of MapReduce and the Google File System, which is to say will run under the Google App Engine. This, of course, ignores Amazon SimpleDB, Microsoft’s SSDS, and relational database systems hosted by Amazon EC2 and in Microsoft Data Centers. Bob concludes:

[I]t looks like [Larry Ellison]'s bought up most of the traditional database-centric software industry just in time for it to be declared obsolete.

This has been a BIG week for cloud database news!

Note: Bob was a panelist at MIT’s Emerging Technologies Conference 08 held 9/23/-25/2008. Microsoft’s Craig Mundie and Amazon’s Werner Vogels were among the keynote speakers. Microsoft and Amazon Web Services were sponsors. Cloud computing appears to be a bit off-topic for a Parallel Computing panel discussing multi-core computer usage.

• Soumitra Sengupta delivers the SSDS Team’s Data Service differentiation from hosted RDBMS instances in SQL Server Data Services Team Architect Contrasts SSDS with SQL Server Under Amazon EC2 of 10/3/2008. The contents of the post are from a comment to my Amazon Adds SQL Server to Oracle and MySQL as EC2 Relational Database Management Systems post of 10/1/2008 (see below).

• Herb Torrens provides an analysis of cloud computing’s current status in his Coming to Terms With Cloud Computing article of 10/2/2008 for Redmond Developer News. Torres offers one of the better second-hand definitions of cloud computing I’ve heard so far:

[Forrester analyst James] Staten defined cloud computing as "a pool of abstracted, highly scalable, and managed compute infrastructure capable of hosting customer applications [that are] billed by consumption."

Herb’s article includes references to Microsoft “Red Dog” projects which analysts believe is what Steve Ballmer called “Windows Cloud” on 10/1/2008 during a Software plus Services (S+S) partner event in London, according to the Register’s Kelly FiveAsh. Details are expected at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2008 in Los Angeles, 10/27/2008 to 10/30/2008.

Jas Dhaliwal’s Steve Ballmer’s Keynote in London post of 10/2/2008 contains a full-length (40:00) video of Steve’s presentation and a transcript of the Q&A segment.

Roger Jennings’ Amazon Adds SQL Server to Oracle and MySQL as EC2 Relational Database Management Systems post of 10/1/2008 analyzes the effect of the addition of Windows Server and SQL Server 2008 hosted on Amazon EC2 to the cloud computing marketplace. He also proposes a new metric: TCNO (Total Cost of Non-Ownership).

SQL Server Compact (SSCE) 3.5 and Sync Services

No posts as of 10/2/2008 2:00 PM PDT

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and Later (General)

Steve Martin describes The Road to PDC - .NET Framework 4.0 and “Dublin” in a detailed post of 10/1/2008.

Miscellaneous (WPF, WCF, MVC, Silverlight, etc.)

•• Roger Jennings points out in his Google Analytics Data for the OakLeaf Blog, 9/4 to 10/4/2008 post of 10/5/2008 that the Oakleaf Systems blog is in the top 12% of all blogs tracked by Technorati for monthly page views and visitors and in the top 1.8% by Technorati Authority.

• Ayende Rahien continues his virtuoso analysis of the CouchDB document database while learning to read Erlang in these two new posts:

• Erlang Reading: CouchDB - Digging Down to Disk (10/4/2008)
• Reading Erlang: CouchDB - From REST to Disk in a few function calls (10/3/2008)

The posts are lengthy and amazingly detailed.

• Rob Conery promises personalization, support for PayPal, and better conformance to his new core MVC template in MVC Storefront's Next Episode of 10/3/2008.

Mary Jo Foley learns that Live Labs kills Deepfish; suspends Volta downloads on 10/2/2008. However, she quotes a Microsoft representative as denying that Volta was being discontinued, but that’s all the rep would say. Very strange.

Mike Taulty wants help with WPF DataGrid and Hiding Columns on 10/1/2008.

Technorati tags: Entity Framework, Entity Data Model, EDM, LINQ to SQL, LINQ to Objects, LINQ to XML, Bindable LINQ, LINQ, ADO.NET Data, Services, Astoria Project, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, SQL Server Data Services, SSDS, Cloud Computing, WPF, MVC, Silverlight 2.0, Volta, Erik Meijer, VS 2010, Visual Studio 2010, NHibernate, LLBL Gen Pro