Chris Garty's Weblog : Object Relational

MBF and WinFS: A view of the world I am entering

chrisgarty — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 21:43:00 GMT

Tim Brookins is an Architect on the MBF team (and he is based in Fargo). When I got impatient waiting for a reply about the position in the MBF team, an email to Tim was the thing that sparked it all off ;).

I just read a post from Tim (two days old) that explains the tie between MBF and WinFS and answers a few questions people might have about the scope of the MBF effort.

I'm sure after reading that, you can understand why I'm really excited about getting over there and getting into it!

OJB.Net and Generics

chrisgarty — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 21:57:00 GMT

I posted a little while ago about trying to use reflection with generic types. I have been trying to use a generic list type within OJB.Net (an object relational mapper for .Net).

I finished investigating this and thought I'd post a write-up about it here in case anyone else is using or wants to use OJB.Net and Generics together: http://weblogs.asp.net/chrisgarty/articles/150558.aspx.

ObjectSpaces delay discussions

chrisgarty — Wed, 26 May 2004 22:21:00 GMT

Some people are taking the ObjectSpaces delay a little harder than others.

I first met Robert McLaws when he hosted the PDC 2003 Object Relational BoF session. I just read one of his recent posts where he argues that the ObjectSpaces delay is good since it is good to get things right the first time. He also tells the people who are disappointed to that their “mentality” is “ridiculous” and that they should “Grow up. Seriously.”.

I think this is a little harsh on the people who were starting projects to hit the market in 2005 that would have used ObjectSpaces. I don't think it is a bad thing for Microsoft to hear that their schedule changes affect ISV's and other customers.

I personally am grateful that Microsoft has delayed ObjectSpaces to combine it with the WinFS work. Making application data as accessible as files in the OS is a brilliant move.

Hopefully when Longhorn comes out we'll be a lot closer to the holy grail of “no more data silos”.

ObjectSpaces and MBF both delayed till Longhorn

chrisgarty — Mon, 24 May 2004 21:50:00 GMT

First we learned that MBF has been delayed till Longhorn (from Tim Brookins) and now ObjectSpaces is adopting the same schedule. The official announcement is here.

I wonder if ObjectSpaces was delayed and that caused the MBF re-schedule, since MBF uses ObjectSpaces for persistence. Either way, because of the extra time, they'll both be stronger and more tightly integrated when they do get released.

Ouch: MBF delayed till Longhorn wave

chrisgarty — Tue, 11 May 2004 22:56:00 GMT

Tim Brookins, an architect on the MBF team, has reported that MBF is no longer in the Whidbey wave and instead will be in the Longhorn wave.

This is an exciting area of technology for Microsoft since it touches so many 'hot' areas: Microsoft's business application development (Green), service oriented architecture (Indigo), object relational persistence (ObjectSpaces), lightweight process support (in-process Biztalk process engine), and model driven architecture (Whitehorse) to name a few.

It is a shame that business application developers won't be able to start using the base classes to build business logic, but Tim points out that “collapsing MBF into a single release [will] be more beneficial for our customers” will allow MBF to focus solely on Longhorn. This is an exciting effort and one that I'll be watching carefully over the next 2 years.

New ObjectSpaces article on MSDN

chrisgarty — Wed, 25 Feb 2004 14:36:00 GMT

A number of people working with me at iP3 are learning ObjectSpaces at the moment. A new article by Dino Esposito for MSDN has a few interesting insights as he documents his first look at ObjectSpaces.