We are the best programmers in the world

Sweden took all three medals in the "7th International 24-hour Programming Contest" in Budapest. Read more here.


Final result
Rank Points Team Nationality
1 11150000 Balloons'R'Us SE
2 10557500 Jon får bestämma SE
3 9010000 Team KTH Itello SE
4 8787500 Royal Air Force SRB
5 8146095 Rusty PL

VBx

The last couple of days there have been a lot talking about VBx. What is it... If you wonder read about it here "What the heck is VBx".

CSLA 3.0 avalible

For all of you using CSLA the 3.0 (test release 4) framework is avalible for download. Read more here. CSLA 3.0 uses WCF and WPF.

Must read post

Den här blogposten av min gode vän Micke är det bästa jag läst på länge. Läs den Micke har träffat rätt igen.

Session Mix 07

All sessions from Mix 07 are are published here.

Web Service Software Factory v3

I found this video from Don Smith about v3 of Service Factory. See it here.

The v3 release of Service Factory I think will be great. Now the Service Factory will use model-first. I think that model-first is critical for most to start use the Service Factory in real life project.

The realease date for v3 is set to 15 november 2007. Can't wait.

Web Service Software Factory v2 evaluation

After some tests of the Web Service Software Factory v2 it's time for my thoughts some kind of evaluation.

The whole Software Factory idea is great. You got a built in framework and built in code generation in the development environment. Your development time could decrease and the quality could increase. I say could because it doesn't matter what tool, framework or technique you use you could abuse it and get the opposite result.

I think that this version of Service Factory isn't ready to use in real life projects. There are some critical issues that must be solved first.

• The framework doesn’t quite feel like a whole. There are different wizards you must use and then there still are source code you must write manually. This work flow must be clearer and more natural.
• The code-generation is just for the first time, and then you must code changes yourself. There must be a way to do the generation many times.
• The code-generation is made from the existing database. The work flow should start with the creation of the business entity. The database should be a place for storing data and the focus should be the business entity model. If we use model-first we have a model to use for repeatedly code-generation when needed.
  

My main concern is that this version of Service Factory isn’t using a model-first perspective. By model-first I mean that the development is starting with the creation of a business entity model and a model for the service contracts. The models will be the glow that holds the whole application together, all code-generation will use the model as the truth.

Today I found and downloaded the v3 of Service Factory. It is really great. The major difference to v2 is that now we use model-first and the models are the foundation of the application. If you do any changes in the model just re-generate the source code.

Pandora closed

Pandora (internet radio) is closed for all us non-US citizens. I found Pandora a year ago and has been a devoted listener. I have found about 5 new great artists there and bought their CD from Amazon. I think the music industry are digging their own grave. They are closing down music services that people use and enjoy, they are hunting fans that playing their idols music and share chords and lyrics. I saw an old film clip on TV from the early days of Mp3 when some record company excecutives was saying that Mp3 was not a threat for them and that they don't gonna change their old strategy for this new media. They woke up when it was to late and now they fighting a fight they could not win.....

The music industry has lost yet one battle by closing down one way for people to find their way back to music.

[Friday fun]: Fainting goats

You must see the fainting goats.

Astoria and Jasper

I saw that Microsoft annonced two new data access technology on the Mix conference in Las Vegas. Both are avalible now as CTPs and they are called Astoria and Jasper.

Astoria: Read the overview document. It said for example "Astoria is an early technology for creating and executing data services. Astoria data services use the Entity Data Model to model data in terms of entities. These entities are exposed as URI-addressable resources that can be accessed using plain HTTP. Astoria also establishes uniform patterns that UI widget frameworks and libraries can leverage to provide additional services on top of the data services."

Jasper: "Project Jasper is geared towards iterative and agile development. You can start interacting with the data in your database without having to create mapping files or define classes. You can build user interfaces by naming controls according to your model without worrying about binding code. Project Jasper is also extensible, allowing you to provide your own business logic and class model. Since Project Jasper is built on top of the ADO.NET Entity Framework, it supports rich queries and complex mapping"

Read more here.

I'm looking forward to the new technologies. I will be interesting to see what happens. I'm just worried when the new technologies don't support model first. I think we must start thinking first about the domian model and not about the database model. We have to wait to Rosario to get a proper model first tool in EDM Designer.