PLINQO

So, came across a post on Stackoverflow today while trying to find solutions to the problem of refreshing a Linq to Sql dbml file - one of the suggestions was PLINQO from CodeSmith.

I've briefly used CodeSmith before, but only briefly and not that indepth, so I downloaded it and tried out PLINQO. Its changed my life.

PLINQO solves so many of my Linq problems and saves me writing so much code that I would have had to do before, its unbelievable. The rules engine alone completely frees me from writing my own constraints!

Its not part of CodeSmith itself, but its a very nice addon and well worht checking out. While you are there, try out the rest of CodeSmith and you may end up hooked on that as well - http://plinqo.com/

Stackoverflow.com

One of *the* sources of awesome on the web. Do not underestimate its power for solving your problem!

New Job!

Hmmm, apparently I like getting paid on time, it solves all sorts of heartache, so today I started a new job as System Developer with Illusion Media Ltd. Look like a decent company, met with Brian and Jason last week and discussed the position, took it almost immediately and here I am!

Old School versus New School

One of my last jobs at FSG was to develop a brand new application in PHP (my language of old, the one I started at FSG with) to handle several rather significant processes. I dutifully did this over a couple of weeks, but found myself constantly looking for functionality that I had come across in my C# tinkerings.

Well, I have been firmly in C# and VB.Net land for two months now, and FSG have stolen me back for a week to put my application live (it had been delayed from production due to third party issues - blame the DVLA!), and in the month and a half or so since I've been away from PHP my whole ethos has changed considerably!

Database access - Linq rules. Just about says it all really - authenticate against the database, create the object schema and ... use it! Nothing could be simpler. Going back to PHP and direct SQL queries is horrendous, as is converting objects into SQL for storage - the future is definitely with ORMs simply because it brings the database directly into code, no more distraction because of separation.

IDE - I never used an IDE with PHP, just stuck to plain old EditPlus, because that was what I liked. Since switching to C# and .Net, I have to admit that I was a bit daunted by Visual Studio at first, but after settling down with it I can honestly say that I never realised just how helpful a decent IDE can be in the development process.

Debugging - PHP just sucks at this, its 'echo' or nothing (well, 'print', but you get my point). An IDE with integrated debugging and code stepthrough saves so much.

Code 'prettiness' - with PHP its all in the php files, be them front end code or class files et al. Separation out to code behind just makes the process all that much cleaner.

Blog Update

This blog has been a bit quiet for the past year or so, and I do apologise for that - my job role took me more and more away from the technical side and more toward creating status reports, budgets and the like. Not good and not where I wanted to go.

Luckily, all that is over and I start a new job with Bluehat Ltd this week - I am moving across the country and back into a technical role, although this time its one of System Developer rather than Infrastructure, and I am thoroughly looking forward to it.

Creating a Web Service Proxy Class in C#

Its really easy, as Visual Studio does it for you!

• Update the web service wsdl
• Under the your project file root, build the new proxy file - wsdl.exe /l:CS /protocol:SOAP http://webserviceurl/webservicename?wsdl
• Accept the changes to the webservicename.cs file, save and rebuild the project
• You now have an up to date dll file with a proxy class for the web service
  

Setting Environment Variables for VS Compilers

In order to be able to use the Visual Studio compilers from the command line, you need to set the environment variables correctly - luckily Microsoft provide a batch file for you to use.

In the Common7\Tools directory under your Visual Studio install, run the VSVARS32.bat batch file.