Giorgio Galante: December 2007 Archives

I have to say that I'm pretty disappointed with the ADO.NET Entity Framework from what I've seen of it.  The few readers that know me personally know that I am extremely opinionated about data access layers & O/R Mappers.  The connection strings required for ADO.NET Entity Framework based projects are horrendous.  How horrendous?  How about an example:

<add name="MyProjectEntities" connectionString="metadata=.\MyProjectDataModel.csdl|.\MyProjectDataModel.ssdl|.\MyProjectDataModel.msl;provider=System.Data.SqlClient;provider connection string=&quot;Data Source=SERVERNAME;Initial Catalog=MyProject;Integrated Security=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=True&quot;" providerName="System.Data.EntityClient" />

Then there's the lame requirement to include in the project output (bin folder) the 3 metadata files listed in the connection string (MyProjectDataModel.csdl, MyProjectDataModel.ssdl, MyProjectDataModel.msl). 

So  my gut feeling is this is not developer-friendly.  I'm trying really hard not to blurt out "Wow, this totally sucks."  I'll still learn it because clients will ask for it, but I'm going back to LLBLGen Pro for my own project.  The appeal that the ADO.NET Entity Framework had for me (over LLBLGen Pro) was that if I chose to provide my clients with the source code to my application(s), they would not need a 3rd party license for the O/R Mapper.  But if my initial impression of the ADO.NET Entity Framework is correct (more complicated to setup than necessary), it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to use it. 

Having worked with Sharepoint since v1, I couldn't have said it better myself:

http://codebetter.com/blogs/jeffrey.palermo/archive/2007/12/18/167927.aspx

This is just a list of my favorite development tools:

Visual Studio 2005/2008 - There's no better IDE out there.

JetBrains ReSharper - After using it for 3+ years, Visual Studio feels naked without this wonderful Add-In.

FinalBuilder - A GUI-ified build management system.  I long for the day we have this kind of interface/system for MSBuild.

Red-Gate SQL Compare - If you do SQL Server 200X development, there's no better friend for figuring out how/why dev, test, staging, prod environments don't match.

Red-Gate SQL Prompt 3.5 - Auto-Completion for SQL Server Management Studio.  I hated writing SQL for years because I had to remember (or constantly look up) all the table names, etc.  With SQL Prompt...no more!

Reflector - Ever want to peak at the code for an assembly that you didn't have the source code for?  Reflector to the rescue.  (This one is free folks...until the preceding products.)

CoolCommands 4.0 for Visual Studio - this free Add-In adds a few features Microsoft missed like copying references from 1 project to another.

Team Foundation Server 2008 - With the addition of built-in continuous integration and SharePoint 2007, this is a worthy upgrade to an already-decent product (Team Foundation Server 2005.)

Note: I don't have a link to Microsoft's product page because I couldn't find one (the official release date for this product is in February, though it's already available in MSDN Subscriber Downloads.)

LLBLGen Pro 2.5 - Hands down, the best O/R Mapper for .NET.  I don't think the Entity Framework from Microsoft will be anywhere near as mature in its first few releases, so for my personal projects - I'm sticking with LLBLGen Pro.