News, examples, tips, ideas and plans.
Thoughts around ORM, .NET and SQL databases.

Monday, March 28, 2011

DataObjects.Net Contribution Program Progress

Hi All,

As you might remember, in February Xtensive LLC officially announced the DataObjects.Net Contribution Program. Frankly speaking, we didn't even imagine what impressive results it would bring.

First of all, I have to mention Csaba Beer and its efficient work on Firebird provider. Csaba developed Sql.Dom driver and now the entire Firebird provider is already integrated into DataObjects.Net ORM core (branch 4.5). It is being tested, fixed and polished by Xtensive LLC engineers. The alpha version will be available soon, may be even this week.

Secondly, Malisa Ncube joined the Contribution Program and chose MySql provider as the goal. After several weeks of hard work the main part of Sql.Dom driver is almost finished. Today I've even managed to run all ORM tests on MySql. Unfortunately, not all of them finished successfully but that's OK for the first time. The work on the provider might require a week or two and after that it will be ready for the alpha.

Last but not least, Entity Model Designer for DataObjects.Net that is being actively developed by Peter Ĺ ulek, appeared like a miracle for most of us. As you know, DataObjects.Net always was strictly code-centric tool and there were no designers or any other visual tools for it. But with the help of Peter the things have been principally changed to better side. While the tool itself is in alpha phase, it looks very promising. Peter promised to blog about the designer soon, so let's wait for the overview or tutorial.

All of these brave and bright developers will receive DataObjects.Net Ultimate editions as a reward for their outstanding efforts.

Wanna see yourself in the list? Choose a feature or two from the feature list and join da game! The reward is guaranteed.

Sunday, March 06, 2011

Nightly builds are back

Hello All,

After some intense efforts of our developers the nightly builds are back and starting from this weekend are available on the downloads page. The first one (build #7299) is already published.

Next builds will appear in the section on a regular basis as soon as fixes are applied to the codebase. The current technological process provides the ability to produce a fresh build within less an hour, so I am sure you will appreciate the innovation.

There is still a couple of tasks that should be done to achieve better level of usability and transparency: for instance, a build should contain information about the changes that are made in it, so a visitor could get an idea which one he should download and install.

Another exciting bit of news concerning nightly builds is that they will be available for everyone, not only for owners of Professional & Ultimate editions as it is stated on the prices page. The page will be updated soon to reflect this change.

Thank all of you who use DataObjects.Net, who visit our support website, who report tricky bugs and request new awesome features. We are trying our best to deliver you mature and solid framework. Thanks for your choice.