Entry for February 11, 2007
After 10 days of negatives temps, some days with -5 for a high, I am ready to be out of the deep freeze. Past -10 my car sleeps with a trouble light under the hood to make sure I can get the kids to school in the morning. Maybe time to add that block heater.
The 7.2 release is currently in Beta. Lots of positive feedback, as well as, bug reports and clean-up work.
We are currently conducting training presentations to helpline, custom code and consultants. Last week I covered PageViewFilters and other tools enhancements, as well as, the new web ProductConfigurator interperter for implementing CTO on the web.
I continue to scout out the direction ahead with Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0. The way looks rough but passable at the moment, though where we all end up is sure to be filled with complaints. There are some tools I can write to smooth the way, but there are significant short-comings in the VS2005 IDE. The VS team seems to have fixated on codeless access to SQL and forsaken all other paths. Everything is focused on stateless, first-normal data updates between flat UI components and the SQL database, or some other object which must be organized along the same CRUD lines in a first normal world. They do not appear to have made any accomodation for web base applications with rich hierarchical complex UI's. Apparently we are supposed to use winforms unless we are implementing an Amazon.com web site. There are web sites and then there are web applications. Microsoft appears to be pressuring the web application camp back to winforms.
In particular databinding UI from hierarchical datasets to webcontrols is just plain gone. They have drastically different models for winform data access as compared to web forms. They are pushing ObjectDataSource and SqlDataSource as codeless access to databases and great productivity enhancements. But these depend on new TableAdapters within the dataset to orchestrate flat table accesses back and forth to the DB. They are tightly coupling the UI to the DB.
For thoses of us with ACID processes based on hierarchical datasets there is no room to fit in. The idea that first normal database requirements are going to start driving UI design is just plain scary. It may be ultra productive for the person creating it, but it's going to be butt ugly for the poor soul who has to actually use such software.
On another front I am watching Orcas with amusement. They are so hyped about LINQ and the ability to hook up SQL query statements to gridview. Manage 2000 has been delivering web query capability for over 5 years which include embedded sub-tables and hyperlinking. Our queries can even be defined from a report generator UI. I predict that when LINQ gets to field everyone will discover there is still a lot of problems because they will often want a three dimensional query result and you can't get that from a first-normal database without a lot of effort.
The reign of quality fights for a hierarchical object oriented UI. The reign of quantity fights for simple flat table models. Who will win?
