Saturday, September 20, 2014

Persistence framework

Today I am looking for a persistence framework for c#. This is hard because I don't need an OR-Mapper. I need something where I can put in an object and it stores it to database or (and that is the hard thing to find) to an isolated storage or file system.


I found the following list:
   http://csharp-source.net/open-source/persistence


This list is rather disappointing (even if in google top ranked) because most of the projects in here are dead. Some admit, some don't. What I really dislike on this list is that even code generators which will manage the access logic are listed as persistence frameworks. I think they aren't.

Still one of the best solutions are:
- mybatis (only "object to DB" mapping): https://code.google.com/p/mybatisnet/
- Habanero (ORM, but also standard UIs): http://www.chillisoft.co.za/habanero/
- SPF (persistence framework, but only for DBs): http://sisyphuspf.sourceforge.net/home.htm

..and yes of couse, I will not forget to mention NHibernate ( http://nhforge.org/Default.aspx/ ).

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Document your code, what's next?

Today I have been working on my release version of my project. 

Releasing a project means to me that
  • the features are developed
  • the features are tested
  • the database was adapted
  • the code is re-factored
  • the code is styled
    ... and last and worst
  • the missing comments (I left to the end as always) are added.

To check style and comments I use the tool "StyleCop" which is quite cool but also a pain in the ... hmmm,... neck. This means that at least all summary tags are filled out. After some routine you don't even think of the benefit of doing this. So what is the benefit of the summary tags (and of course there are a lot more tags to mention like the value, returns, param,...)?

In the msdn description of the summary tag ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2d6dt3kf.aspx ) first of all the object browser window is mentioned, but I don't think that this is THE benefit for most developers. In fact I use the object browser window as good as never... or let's say never.

The article also mentions documentation tools like sandcastle (what is a bad example, because the project is no longer under active development by microsoft ... see http://sandcastle.codeplex.com/ ... even if there is a new open source branch of the project http://shfb.codeplex.com/ ). This project is much too complicated for me. I would like to generate a damn easy chm-file or something which looks great and what makes no troubles at all. 

There are commercial product which seemed to accept my challenge of "creating an easy to use tool" like 
  • vsdocman ( http://www.helixoft.com/vsdocman/overview.html ) or 
  • document X! ( https://www.innovasys.com/product/dx/features_vsnet.html ) or 
  • live documenter ( http://livedocumenter.com/ ) 
did. Other open source project seemed to make a complicated task ( generating a documentation ) more or less impossible (like doxygen). An other approach is to simply provide an xslt file to the generated xml-documentation (out of visual studio).

Finally I decided to use the github project docu ( http://docu.jagregory.com/ ). I downloaded the source, compiled it and it simply worked. I don't really like the template, but this is customizable, so hurray ... I found a solution which generates static and simple web pages. These pages can be opened from inside the visual studio (even if this solution is not yet perfect) using ctrl w + w.

cheers,
Daniel

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Write a great research paper

Hi,

I got a hint about a good youtube video about Professor Simon Peyton Jones, Microsoft Research:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3dkRsTqdDA


It is about 7 tips of how to write a good research paper (but there are about a hundred more in the video inside of the hints):

- #1 Don't wait: write 0:21
- #2 Identify your key idea 4:16
- #3 Tell a story 7:20
- #4 Nail your contributions to the mast 9:34
- #5 Related work 16:44
- #6 Put your readers first 23:50
- #7 Listen to your readers 28:42

I would highly recommend that video ...

kind regards,
Daniel

Friday, September 5, 2014

Link-List

Hi,

I found a cool list of books and links:

- https://github.com/vhf/free-programming-books/blob/master/free-programming-books.md


I will add items to the list if I find something similar...

cheerio,
Daniel