system.data.objects dev guy : Random()

Lots of EF Fun at TechEd Next Week

dsimmons@microsoft.com — Wed, 06 May 2009 07:45:22 GMT

I’m off to TechEd North America in LA next week where I’ll be presenting a 400-level session titled “Applied Entity Framework”. The session will mostly be focused on helping folks be more successful using EF3.5sp1 but also with some info about features coming in EF4 and how to prepare for them. If you are going to be at TechEd, you might want to check out DTL401.

There are quite a few other sessions that are either completely about the EF or contain EF content. So I created the following I-Cal file which makes it real easy to view them all in Outlook or your favorite calendar system: http://www.the-simmons.net/teched-2009-ef.ics In addition to the break out sessions, there are some birds-of-a-feather sessions that sound like they will be very interesting. A helpful resource for folks unable to make the conference in person or who want TechEd info before or after the conference is TechEd Online.

While I’m there, I’ll also be spending plenty of time in the technical learning center and just generally hanging out trying to meet with folks to hear about what you are doing with the EF, to help solve any dilemmas you may be struggling with, and to help folks start getting excited about EF4. While I’m on the topic of EF4 the first beta is coming pretty soon, but if you are at TechEd there will be a hands-on-lab where you can get an even earlier preview of the bits. I know I’m biased, but I think EF4 is really cool. I’m hoping it will really blow your socks off!

One last thing… Julie Lerman recently posted about the fact that we have been referring to the next release of the EF as EF4 to help people keep straight the fact that this is the version of EF going out with .net 4, and that led to an email thread where she suggested that we get some t-shirts made which sounded like lots of fun to me. I would have loved to get a whole bunch of these to give away at TechEd but given tight budgets that wasn’t in the cards (and make no mistake, I’d rather see Microsoft funds going into people and products than shirts). So I did some hunting on the web and found a place that will make custom shirts in small lots and ordered a few to commemorate the fact that EF4 feels like a lot more than the average second release (in spite of the fact that we didn’t have a full release worth of time to devote). The shirts look something like this:

In the off chance that you are crazy like me and interested in such a shirt, you can get your own here: http://www.zazzle.com/v2_squared_ef4_tshirt-235150309421493680

The way this site works, if you buy one of these, they give me a 10% kick-back, but I’m certainly not trying to make any money off of these shirts. So any royalties that come my way from folks buying these will be donated to a local worthy cause: Seattle Union Gospel Mission which does a lot for the homeless and others dealing with hard times in the Seattle area.

In any case, here’s hoping to see you next week!

- Danny

The Sights and Colors of Summer in Seattle

dsimmons@microsoft.com — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:25:00 GMT

We had some family come in from out of state for a visit this week, so we decided to see how much of the sights in and around the Seattle area we could cram into a few days. My wife, her mom and her cousin together took over 1100 pictures in 3 days as we visited some pretty amazing places. As I was consolidating all the digital photos on a few DVDs for everyone to share I was struck by the colors and the beauty of this place where I'm so fortunate to live. So I thought I'd share a few with all of you.

We started with a trip up to Hurricane Ridge which is just south of Port Angeles and at the very North end of Olympic National Park:

Next we took a short hike through the woods to Marymere Falls and along the way we had to stop and try to capture the size of some of the giant trees -- four cousins joining hands couldn't quite reach halfway around this one:

We ended our first day with a stop at Salt Creek Recreation area where we hoped to visit some awesome tide pools on the shore of the Straight of Juan de Fuca. Unfortunately we had bad information about the timing of the tides so we arrived right at high tide rather than low tide. Not that big a loss, though, because the sunset was awesome:

The next day we got up, took two ferries to Friday Harbor on the San Juan Islands and went out whale watching. We saw many Orcas:

For our third day we returned to Seattle proper to visit the Pike Place Market...

and while seeing guys throw huge salmon is cool, we were struck by the beauty of the produce:

We finished our time by letting the kids play in the International Fountain at the Seattle Center:

In the immortal words of Ferris Bueller, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." And who would want to miss all of this? Here's hoping those of you in the northern hemisphere are having a good summer and that all of you get a chance to stop and look around sometime soon. :-)

- Danny

Software Development Meme

dsimmons@microsoft.com — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 03:39:00 GMT

Julie Lerman called me out to participate in this set of questions about how folks got started programming, and it is fun to hear about those kinds of things. So here are my answers and at the bottom a few more people I’ll add to the process.

How old were you when you first started programming?
I think my first experiments with programming happened when I was 9 or 10 on the TRS-80 Model 1 or Model 3 of some friends at school, but I really began programming when I was given my first computer, an Apple ][+, at age 11.

How did you get started in programming?
I remember staying up late on Christmas day writing a program that experimented with getting input from the user, for loops and adding attributes to things to make them flash and such. From that very first day with my own computer I was hooked. For a long time, though, I thought computers would just be a side-line for me and that I would focus on some other field—probably my most common answer to the “what do you want to be when you grow up” question was that I wanted to double major in mechanical and electrical engineering and focus on robotics. As I got older, though, I realized that programming was really the thing that got me excited.

What was your first language?
I programmed initially in applesoft basic (both programs of my own and ones that I typed in from the back of magazines or books), but it didn’t take me long to start experimenting with 6502 assembler, and it was really cool when I got the “Microsoft language card” for my apple (which was really just a 16k ram card taking the machine up from 48k to 64k) because then I could start programming in Pascal. On a side note, this Pascal implementation was actually a very early version of something like managed code because the compiler output p-code which was interpreted at runtime (something like IL or java bytecodes).

What was the first real program you wrote?
What I remember of the very first program I wrote (mentioned above) is something about a count down and an explosion which was the whole screen in flashing type. After that I know there were many other programs but the next significant thing I remember was being paid some trivial amount by an older student at my school who wanted a program which would simulate large D&D battles involving many players without him having to roll the dice by hand. Later I remember really pushing the envelope of my apple by writing programs that did animation of a 3-d wireframe model of the space shuttle with hidden lines removed.

What languages have you used since you started programming?
I went through a phase in college where I was fascinated by the idea of exploring every programming language I could get my hands on, and I dabbled with many things from forth to prolog to modula-2, etc., but I never wrote enough code in any of those to really claim that I’ve used them. A more realistic list would look something like this: basic (*several* flavors), pascal, 6502, 80X86 and 68000 assembler, informix-4gl, clipper, c, c++, scheme, elisp, perl, tcl, vb, c#.

What was your first professional programming gig?
Toward the end of my senior year in high school I took a job working for a local title company doing some computer training and other miscellaneous tasks. Somehow I talked my way into turning it (for a while at least) into a programming job creating a computer-assisted learning program. Since programming wasn’t really the original intent of that job, though, I probably have to point to my second computer gig as the first real job where programming was part of what was expected. I was working at a small computer store doing a combination of sales and service/technical support. My first real programming job was something that one of the owners volunteered us for: creating a database system using Informix to help a charitable organization which was creating a park with a fountain and for a donation you could purchase a brick, have it inscribed and then they would place it in the park. The system I wrote tracked the inscriptions and created files which were sent to the engraving company.

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?
Absolutely! The joy of creating software, working with teams of exceedingly smart people, constantly learning and doing things that can really change the way people work, live and play is something I’m very thankful for.

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?
Building great software is so much more than just getting the computer to run—don’t forget that at its heart this endeavor is all about people, so make sure you focus not just on the technical stuff but also on what we sometimes call the “soft skills” especially all forms of communication.

What's the most fun you've ever had ... programming?
The most fun I’ve had programming has always been working on a project with one or two really smart people when the ideas are flying and we’re pushing the envelope of what we think are brains are capable of. There’s nothing quite like that mindbender where you come across a concept that completely challenges the way you think which leads to a whole series of “Ah ha!” moments as you capture parts of it—often only to discover that there are more depths than you realized so you know you’ll need another “Ah ha!” before you are done. I shared some of the best of these moments with my good friend and partner in crime from high school, Mike. These days I most often get to share the feeling vicariously with my son, Keith, who is just about to turn 13 and is rapidly becoming a much more sophisticated programmer than I ever was at that age.

Who’s next?

Well, I don’t know if we’ll be able to coax them all into responding or not, but I’m always up for an opportunity to learn more about the folks I work with. So I’ll add 5 of my colleagues to the list.

I'll be at DevConnections in Orlando in a couple of weeks

dsimmons@microsoft.com — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:41:00 GMT

I had so much fun talking with folks at DevConnections in Las Vegas last fall that I really wanted to attend a conference again this spring so I could share more about what we're doing with the Entity Framework and meet more great people who are interested in or even using the EF or LINQ to SQL. As it turns out, they needed someone to present a couple of sessions at the upcoming DevConnections in Orlando, so I signed up.

My two talks are:

VMD314: Entity Framework in the Real World
Daniel Simmons
Come see the Entity Framework in action! Check out an exciting new open source application built on the Entity Framework. During this session we’ll discuss and demo the use of the Entity Framework to build a LOB application in the healthcare vertical.

VDM215: Entity Framework: Application Patterns
Daniel Simmons
Microsoft is introducing the ADO.NET Entity Framework and the Entity Data Model to help developers code against first-class business objects when creating business applications. Like any new technology, most of the information available on the topic focuses on what the Entity Framework is, what are its constituting components and related aspects. This session takes the audience beyond the “what“ of the Entity Framework, instead delving into various application scenarios and approaches to application architecture to show how one can use the Entity Framework today. We shall discuss the role of Entity Framework in Web, rich-client, and service-oriented applications.

But I also plan to attend as many of the EF and L2S sessions as I possibly can, so if you are going to be there, I'd love to meet you. I'm usually pretty easy to find because a) I often carry around a bright, lime-green backpack, and b) when it comes to these topics I have an awful hard time keeping my mouth shut. ;-)

- Danny

When deserialize(serialize(x)) != x

dsimmons@microsoft.com — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 04:53:00 GMT

So here’s another random little piece of information that might help someone else out (or me 6 months from now)… As I’ve been rumbling about, lately I’ve been playing quite a bit with webservices and serialization—especially DataContract serialization—and in one of my recent projects I was really fighting with what appeared to be a very simple unit test. The test was designed to verify that a particular structure (guess what structure…a graph of entities) would serialize properly across a webservice. As a simple first approximation, I thought I’d write a little routine which would take an object serialize it with the DataContract serializer and then immediately deserialize it so that I could compare the results to the original. This is quicker and easier than building out the full web service, so it seemed like a good idea. In fact, the idea got even better when I found some code laying around which someone else had written just for this purpose. The code looked something like this:

public static string Serialize<T>(T o)

{

return Serialize<T>(o, new Type[0]);

}

public static string Serialize<T>(T o, IEnumerable<Type> knownTypes)

{

DataContractSerializer dcs = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(T), knownTypes);

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(sb);

dcs.WriteObject(writer, o);

writer.Close();

string xml = sb.ToString();

return xml;

}

public static T Deserialize<T>(string xml)

{

return Deserialize<T>(xml, new Type[0]);

}

public static T SerializeAndDeserialize<T>(T o)

{

return Deserialize<T>(Serialize<T>(o));

}

Beautiful… Now all I have to do is call the generic method SerializeAndDeserialize and I will get back a new object (or ideally a graph of objects) which should be an accurate copy. At least as accurate as the serialization will be, right? WRONG.

Everything was working fine until I happened to run this little baby on some data that had strings with embedded carriage returns (that’s \r for us c# dudes—in my case the data was RTF). Suddenly my comparisons were failing, and it took me quite some time to realize that it had nothing to do with the serializer or the code I was testing. The problem was in the above code. Apparently if you serialize using an XmlWriter over a StringBuilder, these carriage returns are lost. If you actually build a web service with WCF, though, everything goes through fine. ARRRGGGG.

The fix? Use a memory stream instead of XmlWriter/StringBuilder. So the updated code looks like this:

public static Stream Serialize<T>(T o, IEnumerable<Type> knownTypes)

{

DataContractSerializer dcs = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(T), knownTypes);

MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream();

dcs.WriteObject(stream, o);

return stream;

}

public static T Deserialize<T>(Stream stream)

{

return Deserialize<T>(stream, new Type[0]);

}

Other methods look the same. Wouldn’t you know it, the new and improved Serialize method is even shorter and simpler than the old one.

Here’s hoping the next guy finds this post instead of banging their head against the wall for 3 or 4 hours like me. ;-)

- Danny

December 1 and Winter Has Arrived in Redmond

dsimmons@microsoft.com — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 08:31:00 GMT

While there are places nearby that do get a lot of snow, normally weather is pretty mild around here. This year, though, December brought with it snow for real (not to mention power outages and other adventures)...

Of course now that the power outages have past so that I can actually get this post up, things have returned to normal, and the rain has washed away pretty much all of the snow. ;-)

- Danny

Off to Dev Connections in the morning

dsimmons@microsoft.com — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 02:36:00 GMT

In case any of you are attending Dev Connections in Las Vegas this week, I'm planning on being there and would love to meet with you. Since I signed up too late to do an actual session, the powers that be have been kind enough to give me lots of time manning the Data Programmability booth. I was able to finagle my way into a chalk talk with Mike Flasko about architectures for apps built with the EF and/or Astoria, and that will be happening from 2:30-3:00 on Wednesday. I had hoped to get a larger block of time because this seems like a topic that we are getting lots of questions about, and I'd also like to hear thoughts from some of you. If the conversation gets rolling, we'll just have to find some way to continue it.

At any rate, if you are interested in (or even better actually using) the EF, please stop by the booth or find me in one of the sessions, because I'd love to meet you and hear about what you are doing, what questions you have that I can answer or gather some data and put a posting here later, or what ideas you have for improving the product.

- Danny

See you at DevConnections in Las Vegas

dsimmons@microsoft.com — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 09:56:00 GMT

I just got through signing up to attend DevConnections in Las Vegas in early November. Because of some things going on in my family situation, I normally do almost everything I can to avoid travel, but I've really been wanting the opportunity to get to meet with more of the folks who are working with or considering working with the entity framework. This is a particularly interesting conference for me since they've added a whole new data access track with a day of talks from msft folks as well as two days of talks from others--and many of the talks in the track are about my favorite subject (the EF of course). I really look forward to the chance to learn from folks.

I don't think I'll have any official speaking responsibilities (I signed up too late for that), but I'm planning on hanging out in the data access track sessions, and talking with folks as much as possible. If you are going, and would like to get together and chat about the EF, ADO.Net, OR/M in general, Domain Driven Design, Agile, or other geeky topics, then put a comment here or send me some email, and we'll find a way to get together.

- Danny

10 Years at the "Evil Empire", Still Hotfooting Nitrous

dsimmons@microsoft.com — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 19:53:00 GMT

Today marks my 10^th anniversary at Microsoft, and it has been a crazy but exciting time that I wouldn’t trade for any job in the world. I’ll not bore you with a retrospective of all the projects I’ve worked on (how did I end up working on so many different things anyway?), but one of the most important periods of my time at Microsoft is drawing to a delayed but final close, and I can’t leave it completely without commemorating it somehow. No, I’m not changing teams—I’m having more fun working on the Entity Framework as part of the Data Programmability team than ever. The source of this momentous change is that my favorite t-shirt of all time is finally falling apart and I’m going to have to retire it.

A t-shirt? Yes, that’s what I said. This isn’t just any t-shirt, it’s my Netdocs “Hotfooting Nitrous” t-shirt, and every time I wear it I think of the great people, the great product (even if it never made it to the outside world), and the important lessons I learned while working there.

The story of "Hotfooting Nitrous": NetDocs was a huge, ambitious project, but one key part was an email and calendaring product designed to rival Outlook but built on a completely new technology platform. As the product started coming together, an important goal was to reach the point where we could all dogfood our email as a forcing function to figure out issues and address them (if a Microsoft team can do all of its email and calendaring using a product, then it's pretty darn functional). During one of the early internal releases when spell checking was first turned on there was a bug such that spell checking happened automatically when an email message was sent, and misspelled words were not only flagged but automatically replaced by the spell checker’s best guess of the correct spelling. Before this issue was found and corrected, the dev manager used that build to send an email to the entire team telling them that everyone should be “Dogfooding NetDocs”. The resulting message that arrived in everyone's mailbox said that we should be “Hotfooting Nitrous”. This phrase was so serendipitous, that we had t-shirts made for everyone on the dev team to commemorate the event.

Someday when I’m feeling especially nostalgic maybe I’ll regale you with stores about other memborable events like the office re-decoration efforts “Agent Orange” and “Shishirbert” or the mental associations I have between Outlook and a magic 8-ball, but for now let me just leave all of you with the wish that you will have a job half so wonderful as I have found my time at Microsoft to be (warts and all), and a wish for myself that the next 10 years at Microsoft will be as great as the last 10.

Rich vs. Reach

dsimmons@microsoft.com — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 11:48:00 GMT

In spite of my enthusiastic passion for the Internet and my history (before coming to Microsoft I worked on “Campus Wide Information Systems” at Idaho State University during the birth of the web, then I ran the second ISP ever in Idaho, etc.), I’ve always been a huge fan of rich clients. Web applications are great for some things, but for an application I’m going to spend a lot of time using, give me a carefully tuned rich client experience any day (whether that be Excel’s spreadsheet interface, Digital Image Suite’s keyboard shortcuts which I know by heart after editing umpteen-thousand pictures so we could print them in the right aspect ratio for my wife to scrapbook, or my trusty emacs text editor).

In an email discussion today with a close former-Microsoftie friend of mine, Mike Hewitt, he captured my sentiments on this subject so beautifully that I have to share the quote:

Online apps are great places to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there…

Ain’t that the truth? Outlook Web Access, for instance, has come a long, long way and is actually pretty decent when it’s your only option, but if I ever have the choice of whether I want to use OWA or the full Outlook client, it’s a no-brainer.

Now if only someone would build a truly decent rich client experience for blogging and interacting with the MSDN forums… Certainly there have been some attempts in this direction, but so far none of them have really done it for me. Ahh well. So many interesting projects, so little time.

- Danny