Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Released

Finally Microsoft has released a service pack for visual studio. It claims to have fixed many bugs and has performance improvements in the build process. This will certainly be helpful for developers using VB.NET since the original VB.NET compiler crashed frequently and it took unnecessarily long time to compile solutions. Release notes for the service pack is available at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928957/.

Web application projects are now built in to the IDE. You will have to uninstall the web application projects add on to install SP1.

If you plan to install SP1 its better to go through the release notes first, it can save you a lot of frustration because it seems that there are many workarounds you have to do to get it installed depending on your current configuration.

Typed datasets and VS 2005

Recently I had to use typed datasets in a project for the first time. I always preferred using custom entity objects but due to time constraints there was no option on this one. One thing I don't like about the new typed datasets is that it combines the data access code with the data itself if you drag a table from the server explorer into the dataset it creates the connection and the table adapter in the dataset itself, so much for tiered architecture. So I decided the best thing to do is to delete the table adapter from the dataset and just use it as a container.

Another issue that you have to keep in mind when you use typed datasets is that sooner or later you are going to create datasets that share tables among them. If you create the table in each and every dataset its going to create a maintenance nightmare. A better option is to add a xml schema to your project and define all the tables there and include that schema in each of your datasets using the xs:include element. This way you only have to change one file if your table definitions change.

One disadvantage of the above method is that you cannot define keys in the schema, you have to add the keys to each and every dataset. Another minor issue is that the graphical dataset designer gets a bit messed up with this approach. Lets hope the next version of VS comes with a better dataset designer.

Auto Door, Please close gently

I saw the above sign pasted on the sliding door of a van while I was on my way to work. It reminded me of hiring a van to go on a trip sometime back. It also had an automatic door and the driver was always screaming at us for slamming the door (I think its bad for the door closing mechanism) but we kept on doing it .

The fundamental principle that the designers of this door violated is that when people get used to something it's very difficult to change. I think that goes double for software UI's, people are used to the existing familiar concepts and that's something we have to keep in mind before we design our next snazzy application.

Back to SL

Finally its time to go back home to Sri Lanka. I will be leaving for SL tomorrow (20th) a week ahead of schedule. Everything went ok and the project was a success (despite been deployed on Friday the 13th ;-) ).  Norway is a nice place to be but the alcohol is too damn expensive.

Friday the 13th

We went live with out latest project. A web portal based on dotnetnuke last Friday (13th) and it was the 13th build. It was kind of cool going live on Friday the 13th with the 13th build. I am not a superstitious gut it only occurred to me after a colleague suggested that we skip build 13 and go to 14.

Update after a long time....................

A lot of things has changed and its an year since I last posted. I work for a new company now namely Eurocenter DDC. These days I am in Norway doing implementation of our latest project. As for the project I think we did a good job and I am confident that it will be a success, as for Norway its a bit too cold for me even though its still autumn and the temperature is around 10 degrees Celsius. I got a sore throught and a fever because of this. But its a nice change, oslo city is good. We went to this amusement park called tusenfryd and tried the speed monster, thats my first time on a roller coaster and I am sure thats going to be my last time too.

Back with a domain name

I finally got a domain for myself ("chamindu.com"). I got it from godaddy and it's a really good deal with just 9.20 USD per year. My email is hosted in windows live custom domains. All of this started when I was browsing through merills blog and came across this article.