I have no idea where this post is going to go but I have several things that have come up in discussion lately with developers that I need to get out.  The conversations I've been having are around building applications and using the CSLA.Net business object framework.  This article doesn't focus on CSLA.Net so even if you aren't using it, these principals still apply.  This post stems from conversations with developers that are spending a lot of time creating beautiful object models.  I've seen developers spend a lot of time on perfecting the object model of an application based on...

Have you ever watched the movie Forrest Gump?  If you are reading this article the odds are pretty high you have.  As you watched the movie did you notice how Forrest told his story?   Forrest wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer but yet he was able to paint a picture that drew the listener in.  He didn't use big words to speak or even speak in a lavish tone.  Yet his story kept audiences glued to their seats.  It is a true classic.  We can all learn from Forrest, especially software developers. How To Communicate With Others Before...

I have a love hate relationship with Windows Communication Foundation.  I love it because the concepts of building a service are so simple.  I love the fact that I can expose the same service three different ways supporting different interoperability points within the business.  I also hate it because a there are so many ways to configure the service it can get daunting at times.  Configuration isn't as bad as the built-in lack of ability to view messages.  WCF doesn't provide a sample message page describing the SOAP messages for a request and response like the old ASMX services.  While...

Since SQL Server 2005 .Net developers and DBAs have had the ability to create custom SQL CLR types.  It wasn't until recent I found a few uses for them.  Not only did I find a use for them but a DBA who is a team member did as well.  If you would like more information about SQL CLR types or are new to them start by reading the introduction here.   What follows is a walk through from start to finish creating a user-defined type (UDT).   The project source code is available at the end of the article. Maintaining Data Integrity One of the advantages of SQL...

If you are an experienced .Net developer more than likely you've come to a cross roads of sorts in development over which object model to go with.  Do you use Strong-Typed Datasets or should you write your own business entities from scratch or generate business entities using an ORM.  A reader emailed me asking my opinion the other day and the very question was also raised on Twitter by Joel Ross yesterday as well.  Here are my words of wisdom on the subject matter to help you hopefully arrive at a conclusion which road you may want to travel. Things to...

It seems that an article I wrote a while back is making its way around the Internet once again.  It never fails that once a year or every 6 months it pokes it's head up from the ashes, dusts itself off and finds new readers.  The article I'm talking about is this one: How an Open Source Developer Transitioned to .Net It is an interesting read and if you haven't read it, check it out. I started getting lots of emails from readers last night and this morning as the article was passed around.  One person emailed me a question...

I have Data Dude (aka, Visual Studio for Database Professionals) installed on my local machine.  However, my other team members don't have Data Dude installed.  They are running Visual Studio Team System for Developers.  This puts us all in a quandary.  For example, if I update the database with Data Dude, how do the other developers get the latest updates installed to their local sandbox?  Better yet, how do they generate fake data for the database when they don't Data Dude installed?  This is supposed to be addressed in future versions of Data Dude but I needed something now.  Here is...

Ayende wrote a post about Acropolis as another executable XML language.  Then a few other people chimed in on comments about Acropolis being another example of Microsoft providing tools to turn bad developers into mediocre developers.  I think the point of Acropolis has been totally lost in this conversation so please allow me to weigh in. To start with WPF is already expressed in XML.  This has been known for awhile and we've all seen amazing results of expressing the UI declaratively.  Look at all the eye candy WPF and Silverlight has dazzled us with over the past several months...

For those of you that aren't involved at all with open source software the Mono project is an open source effort to run .Net applications on various platforms.  About Mono If you watch Miguel from Novell speak about the Mono project the main reason they started it is to be able to open up more application to the Linux platform.  One way to do this is to write them from scratch.  The other is to use what is already out there.  Linux has browsers, music players and is good at server protocols but lacks productivity business entrenched applications (I'm not talking about openoffice,...

One of the engineers that works on the same team I work on blogged about his trials and tribulations of using Enterprise Library 3.0 with Environmental Overrides.  Last week I checked in Enterprise Library 3.0 into team foundation server and he got assigned the task of re-configuring all of our config files to use the new feature of environmental overrides.  Currently we have test, beta and prod environments for our main application so this was something we thought we could immediately benefit from.  His review it turns out is less than shiny based on how environmental overrides were done in EntLib...

Alfred Green who does a Podcast show called AG Speaks interviewed me a month or so ago and he finally got the Podcast posted up to his site.  I've known Alfred for several years where we first initially met at the Washtenaw Linux Users Group in the late '90's.  The interview will probably give you more information about The Elder than you'll ever want to know.  I've always found it interesting to know how people came to do what they do and the thought process that went into it.  This interview will provide you a lot of that information.  We...

Before I start this article, let me be up front and state that I do not use DataSets 100% of the time.  I do use the heck out of them in demos and presentations because, well, they demo well.  There is a never ending debate on whether to use DataSets or not.  I say use them, but not in all situations.  That's my official stance on them.  In a lot of cases they make sense, espeically when doing binding to a DataGrid and reconciling changes, in others they don't.  We are not here today to argue for or against them though.  What I will share with you are some...

If you've been waiting for the right job to come along, specifically a job opening at one of the top companies in the country, your wait is officially over.   If you are passionate about programming and designing large scale Enterprise systems where you get to have a direct impact on the business, we need you! We have several .Net Engineer openings available at my current employer Quicken Loans.  You can't be considered if you don't apply and you won't get preferential treatment with your resume if you don't contact me directly! We have openings in several different areas and need people who have skills in...

Believe it or not, engineers or developers tend to structure their applications in Visual Studio various ways.  For those that are just learning .Net and Visual Studio it is hard to decide where to put things.  Hopefully this article will provide some guidance. Where did I put that file? So you've decided that you want to write an application in .Net.  For learning purposes you start adding controls or pages to your application and you are well on your way to making a somewhat usable app.  After awhile you start to notice your solution becomes a cluttered mess with files and...