Living in the Tech Avalanche Generation

It’s time to get Doing .NET Days off and running for 2010 and whilst we were originally expecting to be running on the 27th of February it has proven difficult to book the training facility for that date. Therefore I can announce that Saturday the 6th of March is locked in and finalised. Please accept our apologies if your plans have been affected by the change of date. You can visit this link and register via email. Remember seats are fairly limited so if you wish to attend don’t put it off if you can help it.

The topics covered this time around are ‘Helping the Entity Framework play its <ROLE>’, looking at ways of using behavioural roles defined by interfaces in your system to be explicit and achieve lower latency, greater throughput, more highly testable and maintainable code . The second topic will be a practical look at getting started with NServiceBus, including demonstrations taking in messaging patterns such as Publish / Subscribe and full duplex.

This is the final part of the series on using IronPython together with the Entity Framework.

Part 1.0

In this first instalment we setup the discussion on what we were trying achieve, how to use the __clrtype__ class in IronPython 2.6 to create PODO’s (Plain Old Dlr Objects) ala POCO, for integration with the Entity Framework. Our aim is to use the Entity Framework using the Beta 2 of Entity Framework 4.0.

Part 2.0

We dig in deep and explore the internals of what’s required to create a PODO (POCO for the DLR). We also build an IronPython ObjectContext and determine how to manage mapping between the Entities and Database. We achieve a successful test run and prove that we can in simple cases get IronPython and Entity Framework to worth together in this fashion. Finally in part 2.0 we take steps to verify lazy loading for an entity graph and we strike our first hurdle, leaving us to look forward to part 3 to see if the problems encountered might be overcome.

Part 3.0

We start to examine the issues with scalar / native types and see how proxies fit into the puzzle. We check out eager loading and whilst we do have some success we still face a problem in rounding out the whole story. Finally we prepare to journey into debugging a crash dump file for part 4.

Part 4.0

Using Visual Studio 2010 we successfully load up our crash dump file in the hope of jumping over the final hurdle. We discover that the specialized version of IronPython 2.6 does not have publicly available debug symbols but we can manage to see where the active thread was when the fatal crash occurred.

The State of Play

The current set of problems unfortunately leaves us short in terms of using the Entity Framework from IronPython, however I did previously demonstrate (in two parts here and here) how this can be achieved by way of introducing an interop layer with C# addressing the Entity Framework.

Part 1.0

Part 2.0

Part 3.0

Part 4.0

It’s my hope that this post will make the previous posts easier to find given my recent problems with a blog scraping site. Finding the original content has been difficult in light of my successfully having the scraping site in question remove my content.

After having recently sat through Udi’s 5 day course on Advanced Distributed  Systems Design (ADSD) and after several days of quiet introspection punctuated with some random reconnecting to the web full of it’s opinion and ideas, I found myself ever more at peace with the challenges that lie ahead. During a conversation with Udi whilst he was here in Melbourne recently, he recalled a twitter comment made by my colleague Mark wherein he quoted my flippant remark that having NServiceBus at my disposal could be likened to being armed with nuclear weapons. Perhaps it wasn’t the most elegant analogy but I think it conveys the sentiment, I feel able to leverage and harness a great deal energy and power. This sentiment can also be attributed to the many great ideas that you find yourself being exposed to in the ADSD course

In these times of rampant software development technology proliferation, it would be easy to feel overwhelmed and I know from speaking with colleagues that many do, yet somehow I feel more at peace than ever. Technology stacks, frameworks, buzzwords, paradigm shifts, they are all hurtling towards us at a pace most of us have never known and the inertia alone is staggering.

Many of us need help in separating the stuff from the fluff. As Neo said to the architect, “the question is choice”! Well, is it? What are the choices? Do technology choices alone get your system built? No of course they don’t but many have fallen into the trap of behaving as though they do. Ever caught yourself saying something like “oh if I just use MVVM or ASP.NET MVC, my system will be perfect because of benefits X, Y and Z”? Other developers occasionally ask me, “what technology should I learn next” or “how do I future proof myself”? I think they are somewhat surprised by my answer; my advice is to stay as far away as possible from attempting to build value as a vendor stack expert and focus attention on maturing and refining your design and communication skills. It seems obvious really, after all once you have well developed your design and architectural skills, then you are far better placed to make appropriate technology choices. The ensuing  implementation experience will sort out any technology knowledge gaps that you feel the job’s market is causing you to feel downward pressure from. This doesn’t mean ignore technology all together, by all means pull it apart and analyze it, see how it fits but not in isolation – you need to give it it’s context. This became quite plain to me after having been through the course two years ago.

The DDD / SOA course was a lynch pin for me it was the key that has opened many doors. Without the learning in principles first, no technology will stop you from making a mess of things. Again it’s pretty obvious when you say it but I am sure I am not alone as someone who came to the course with a whole set of assumptions based on layered designs and technology fads as a bag of best practice tools and tricks.

I have now had the privilege of sitting this course three times and it never get’s old. Since I first experienced it two years ago, the content has changed a little and become even more refined. Each time I sit through the course I feel more empowered than the last time, the lessons are learned more deeply and start to become part of my psyche.

Some of my fellow attendees have posted their thoughts upon having completed the course just recently in Melbourne and I suggest you consider their feedback as well. If you haven’t heard there is now a mailing list dedicated to discussing the courses content and if you are planning on attending in London or the US sometime this year you should definitely check out the mailing list.

I would like to leave you with this; if you have not done this course and you have even the vaguest inkling that you might stand to gain something from learning what what some of the best architects in world know but rarely share in great detail, then do whatever it takes to get yourself a seat when next ADSD rolls into town or find a way of bringing Udi and the course to you.