Sorry for the late notice, but we're going to have to cancel the ALT.NET meeting for this month. We'll get things geared up again for next month.

Nikhil Kothari wrote a brilliant blog post titled Ajax with the ASP.NET MVC Framework. In that post, he built a demonstration TaskList application that used Ajax and the ASP.NET MVC framework that Microsoft is working on. Microsoft is doing a good job in releasing more frequent updates to this framework, but that means that there will be pain when moving from one release to the next. The ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 release was no exception to this rule. There were a list of documented, tedious and manual steps that one needed to follow to get their old code running with preview 2: update web.config, change the route description, update assembly dependencies, etc.. There were also other items that were not so well-documented:  add ProjectTypeGuids to the csproj file, methods that fell out of the preview 2 release (e.g. ViewFactory.CreateView), etc.

I updated Nikhil's code, and some basic testing shows me that it's working with the preview 2 bits. Download the updated code here. Please leave a comment or send me an email if you see any errors that need to be corrected.

ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 was released yesterday. I've had a chance to install and play with it, and I hate to report that I am underwhelmed. My thinking leads me to believe that MS rushed this release out the door just to be able to say they shipped something at MIX. While there has been good progress made on several issues (e.g. medium-trust support, public methods are callable by default, and route setup is improved). However, I find several other things lacking, referenced from ScottGu:

1. Source code is not released. Sure, it might be coming "soon", but why not have everything coordinated and ready to go? Hitting an arbitrary deadline of "ship while at MIX" is less important to me than having answers to questions like these.
2. Dynamic Data (scaffolding) will not work with Preview 2. It is almost always inexcusable to take functionality and features away. The ability to scaffold is one of the coolest things in Rails. Having something similar in ASP.NET was a welcome treat. Now it's gone. Again, I'm sure there is something that will be released "soon", but why not have everything ready to go? I hate not only playing catch up years later, but having a taste of it, only to have it yanked a few weeks later.
3. The "choose your unit testing framework" feature that was hyped up ships with only MSTest enabled. I understand that MS is working to enlist support from the various unit testing groups to add their tool to the list, but it seems disingenuous to post mocked up screen shots with test frameworks in a combo box that were never developed.
4. Others have pointed out some more detailed issues that need solving to help with testability (e.g. see here and here).

I look forward to seeing these issues addressed ASAP because I absolutely LOVE the promise that the MVC bits hold.

All in all, I was very pleased with the inaugural meeting of the Milwaukee ALT.NET group. We had a turnout of 10 people, which exceeded my expectation in quantity, and the quality was quite good, too. We talked about general architecture topics for about 45 minutes, and then Todd Penland led the group in discussion on persistence and the Unit of Work pattern. We talked about various alternatives to building this yourself (e.g. NHibernate), and talked about the pros and cons of this approach (i.e. requiring a topological sort to deal with database changes properly (something near and dear to my heart from when I was writing code for MIDAS/DataSnap and BDP), handling object graphs, requiring a MarkDirty() call in the property setters, etc.). It was a very engaging discussion. Thanks to everyone who showed up, and to SpiderLogic for providing the refreshments.

Here are the details for next month:

When: Wednesday, April 9, 2008 @ 7pm
Where: 10000 Innovation Drive, Suite 260 (SpiderLogic office)
What: Dan Piessens (who is on the advisory panel for Unity and EntLib 4.0) will cover Unity and EntLib 4.0

I'm looking forward to it, and hope you are, too. If you're planning on being there, please send me an email to dmiser@distribucon.com, or leave a comment here. That way I can plan the food and refreshments accordingly. Feel free to drop me a line on topics you'd like to see covered, too.

Updated to change the date to April 9th. This date change will allow us to hopefully get more exposure thanks to Scott Isaacs and the WI .NET User Group. Thanks, Scott!

A co-worker of mine, Brian Kapellusch, is working on a web framework to give us a garden path for ASP.NET applications. The code that he's writing (and the code to use it) is trés elegant. One of the underpinnings of this framework is his use of the ObjectDataSource class (ODS). I am making heavy use of NHibernate and Spring.NET in this application as well. My understanding of the ODS told me that if I wanted to control how the source object was created, that I simply needed to handle the ObejctCreating event and assign the desired object instance in that event to e.ObjectInstance (see here for some more usage examples).

However, it turns out that is not enough to fully control when an object gets created. If you set the TypeName property to a concrete class, ODS will also create a new object behind the scenes - even if you have handled the ObjectCreating event. This becomes very problematic when using an IoC container to automatically build up and inject properties into your class.

The bottom line is this: If you see one version of your object that has things built up properly (because the IoC container was used properly), and one version that has null properties (because, in essence, ODS called "new MyClass()" for you, which doesn't let the IoC container do it's job), you should change the TypeName to point to the interface type instead of the concrete class type. Much thanks to Brian for this one.

I'm using NHibernate a lot more lately, and it's been working great. One of the downsides, though, is the fact that you need to build up the mapping files by hand. Well, no more. I stumbled upon the open source project, active-record-gen, on Google Code. One of the templates that it provides is one that will generate NHibernate mapping files for tables in an MSSQL database. I tried this on a couple of databases and it works rather well.

A few small suggestions:

• Implement a better pluralization/singularization strategy by using Inflector.NET.
• Work with more databases than just MSSQL.
• Allow for the connection string to be built up with more options. Right now, it requires SSPI integration, and attached databases don't work as well as they should. See here for more details.

I would like to take it upon myself to announce the formation of the Milwaukee chapter of the ALT.NET UserGroup. It will meet the first Wednesday of every month, with the first meeting to take place on 3/5/08 @ 7pm at 10000 Innovation Drive, Milwaukee, WI. Pizza and drinks will be served, and the event will be free to attend. Thanks to SpiderLogic for sponsoring the first meeting.

This group will cover agile development tools and techniques with .NET, best practices for architecture and coding, emerging technologies, and anything else the group decides to cover. For more backstory on ALT.NET, read this post. The use group will be a very participant-driven group. I will not look to lead this group in any significant way, other than to call this group to order, and get people involved in sustaining it. I've learned from other user groups that if a group is too dependent upon one person, it is a matter of time before it fails.

For the first meeting's agenda, I propose we get some volunteers to take on some minimum responsibilities and then break into an OpenSpaces format, where technical topics will be presented by anyone who wants to present. I don't want this to be yet another 1-way presentation medium for 1-2 hour topics, so be prepared to be engaged, discuss, and share (bring your laptop to showcase code and/or slides). I'll take a swipe at talking about ASP.NET MVC this first meeting. If you have something you want to see covered, or especially if you want to cover something, post a comment, and we'll get it on the agenda.

Please pass this notice around to anyone you think will be interested! If you plan on attending, I would appreciate either a comment on this blog or email to dmiser@distribucon.com, just so we can gauge how much food and drink to have on hand. I am really excited about this, and look forward to seeing everyone there!!