Architecture

Enterprise Library 3

Scott Kuhl — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 13:11:00 GMT

Microsoft's Enterprise Library version 3 is now available. The two big new features are:

Validation Application Block - Developers can use this application block to create validation rules for business objects that can be used across different layers of their applications.

Policy Injection Application Block - Developers can use this application block to implement interception policies that can be used to streamline the implementation of common features, such as logging, caching, exception handling, and validation, across an application.

Design Patterns for ASP.NET Developers (Part 3 - Final)

Scott Kuhl — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 12:15:00 GMT

The third and final installment in the Design Patterns for ASP.NET Developers series from DevX is now available.

Read Part 3: Advanced Patterns

Read Part 2: Custom Controller Patterns

Read Part 1: Basic Patterns

(Looks like Sreenivas Moqullapalli beat me to the punch on this one.)

Design Patterns for ASP.NET Developers (Part 2)

Scott Kuhl — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 14:03:00 GMT

Part 2 of the DevX series, Design Patterns for ASP.NET Developers, is now online. This one focuses on Custom Controller Patterns.

Read Part 2: Custom Controller Patterns

Read Part 1: Basic Patterns

Web 2.0 API Listing

Scott Kuhl — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 17:59:00 GMT

Hundreds of API's are already listed here. I like that you can see the services by number of reported mashups.

API Listing at ProgrammableWeb.com

ASP.NET or Ruby on Rails - Answer by Joel

Scott Kuhl — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 15:35:00 GMT

Joel Spolsky has a very good argument included in his latest article, Language Wars, if you are considering trying Ruby on Rails.

Before you flame me, Ruby is a beautiful language and I'm sure you can have a lot of fun developing apps it in, and in fact if you want to do something non-mission-critical, I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun, but for Serious Business Stuff you really must recognize that there just isn't a lot of experience in the world building big mission critical web systems in Ruby on Rails, and I'm really not sure that you won't hit scaling problems, or problems interfacing with some old legacy thingamabob, or problems finding programmers who can understand the code, or whatnot. So while Ruby on Rails is the fun answer and yes I've heard of 37 Signals and they're making lovely Ruby on Rails apps, and making lots of money, but that's not a safe choice for at least another year or six.

He goes on to talk about something I have lived by for years. Write what you know, unless you are just trying to have fun.

It's good to explore and try new things. You may make major improvements to yourself, your code and your company. But don't gamble on critical systems. And if you have existing code, think very hard before you introduce new technology. It just compounds the learning curve.

Read Language Wars by Joel Spolsky. No really, read it.

Build More Scalable Sites

Scott Kuhl — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 10:43:00 GMT

Reduce the chances of generating the dreaded 503 error—"Site Too Busy"—by implementing asynchronous processing with ASP.NET 2.0.

I measured the effects of tying up a thread by creating a test client that issued 50 simultaneous requests to an ASP.NET page that, in turn, called a Web Service. The average response time for those 50 requests was more than eight seconds as new requests waited for threads tied up by old requests to become available.

The solution is to implement asynchronous processing. Doing so means your page's thread is returned to the thread pool, so another page can use it while your own code waits for results. When the remote server returns its results, a new thread picks up from where your page left off. The average response time for a new set of 50 calls by the client fell to less than two seconds when I switched my test page to asynchronous processing.

Read Build More Scalable Sites

A Simple Business Rules Manager

Scott Kuhl — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 14:34:00 GMT

Rocky Lhotka shows how you can use delegates to build a simple rules engine to centralize the validation logic in your application.

Read A Simple Business Rules Manager

The Ultimate ASP.NET 2.0 Provider List

Scott Kuhl — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 14:49:00 GMT

An extensive list of articles from around the web, including MSDN, about security, role, membership and profile providers.

The Ultimate Asp.net 2.0 Security, Role, Membership and Profile Provider List V1.0

List of O/R Mappers and Code Generators

Scott Kuhl — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 14:05:00 GMT

Looking for a O/R Mapper for .NET?

Expert C# 2005 Business Objects, Second Edition Now Available

Scott Kuhl — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 16:01:00 GMT

The next edition of Rockford Lhotka's best selling series utilizing his CSLA framework is now available as an eBook from Apress.

It was not yet available in print from Apress or Amazon, but you can probably expect it to show up sometime today, and in bookstores tomorrow.

The VB version is still a couple of weeks out.

CSLA .NET 2.0 homepage is here.