GuruStop.NET

In VS 2010, extension manager is part of a nice new generation of VS plug-in system. One of the great features of it is how it can go online talk to Microsoft Visual Studio Gallery website to retrieve list of extensions there, automatically discovering updates for installed extensions, and allowing me to add new extensions directly from within Visual Studio.

The Problem:

However, in my company I could not take benefit of that for long time. Reason is, the company uses Blue Coat proxy, with some active directory based authentication. We cannot access the Internet unless we use that proxy, no direct connection allowed, most other proxies are also blocked (by blocking the common proxies port 8080 and many other common ports).

Although I have the proxy set in Internet Explorer, and I have the username/password stored in my Windows Credentials store  (Start–> Run–> Control PanelAll Control Panel ItemsCredential Manager) -since my primary work laptop and user account on it are not part of the company domain-, Visual Studio did not seem to be able to use that.

Anything that requires online communication not directly using the browser is not working. The main feature missed by this is Extensions Manager integration with the Visual Studio Gallery online.

In NHibernate there is a Save(entityObject) method, which creates a new row in the database with the given entity object, also, has an Update(entityObject) which updates the row corresponding to the entity object with the property values of this object. It also has a SaveOrUpdate(entityObject) method, which checks the whether the entity object corresponds to an existing row in the database, and chooses whether to call Save(…) or Update(…) based on that.

The way I usually do web applications across multiple tiers, when not using view models specifically, makes me encapsulate much code in Services layer that sometimes does not need to care about whether the given entity is persisted in database or not. Thus wanted to have similar method using Entity Framework as ORM.

Of course I have implemented the method number of times and the code evolved based on which version of Entity Framework I’m coding against, and my knowledge of the framework internals as well.  Actually, when you work with so many ORMs like I did, a new ORM or ORM version turns to only sound like “What’s new in the manual?” thing.

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Microsoft has released a final version of its book “Microsoft Application Architecture Guide, 2nd Edition”.
The book is described as:

This guide is available online here in the MSDN Library and will be available in the Fall of 2009 as a Microsoft Press book, ISBN# 9780735627109, that you can purchase through local and online booksellers.

The guide is intended to help developers and solution architects design and build effective, high quality applications using the Microsoft platform and the .NET Framework more quickly and with less risk; it provides guidance for using architecture principles, design principles, and patterns that are tried and trusted. The guidance is presented in sections that correspond to major architecture and design focus points. It is designed to be used as a reference resource or to be read from beginning to end.

The guide helps you to:

• Understand the underlying architecture and design principles and patterns for developing successful solutions on the Microsoft platform and the .NET Framework.
• Identify appropriate strategies and design patterns that will help you design your solution’s layers, components, and services.
• Identify and address the key engineering decision points for your solution.

While I was planning to write about the same topic and have the draft ready in my Windows Live Writer waiting to complete, I found an interesting question in StackOVerflow and couldn’t just resist to answer:

ORM/Persistence layer Advice

The question starts with:

I’m starting a new project and I’m looking around for either a very good ORM or for a non-SQL-based persistence layer.

Then follows up with a REALLY GOOD summary of what he believes about each known ORM he knew out of his own findings and search. I advice you to go read it.

However, all this investigation didn’t get him to a single choice answer. And I can’t blame him. This is one fo the questions that will remain for so long without a single answer, or maybe having the popular “It depends” answer.

I have had a LONG research in this topic as well. I have read for so long (and watched videos/casts) to make sure of the best usage of many ORMs and then used them sometimes in test projects sometimes in production, and I wanted to share my thoughts based on this. I posted a long answer there on the question in StackOverflow, and I want to share this answer with you here. I may also have a second part of this post based on my existing Windows Live Writer draft, but, based on my previous times, I think I won’t!

Few minutes ago a colleague and friend asked me about some problem he was having with ASP.NET themes. He was using a theme and including a CSS file in it, the CSS file was linked in the generated HTML but clearly it was not applied. Putting the URL of the CSS file in the browser address bar would return an empty result in Firefox, and a crappy DOCTYPE,HTML,HEAD,BODY tags in IE. The same website works normally with other developers running Windows XP or Windows 7.

Going further to the problem, I tried checking the file access, giving extra permissions and so on, checking web.config and global.asax for any ASP.NET HTTP Handler or HTTP Module that might be handling all requests. None of this existed. Then, I switched to IIS, trying to change the website from custom Application Pool to default integrated pipeline one to default classic (IIS 6 like) one, but no use.

Now I started thinking, images in the website didn’t show also! I didn’t know whether this was a DB/code issue or related to not showing the CSS, well, maybe something is wrong with IIS installation, right? Well, exactly!!!

Here’s what the problem was: