Potash Valley

I am currently publishing all our innovative open-source developments on CodePlex for consistency. This is a huge work as we have many projects to publish, but I hope it will result in a bigger impact than publishing them separately.

You can see all the already published ones here: http://www.codeplex.com/Project/ProjectDirectory.aspx?TagName=Evaluant

Some more ones will increase the list.

I've just published a video demonstrating how to use Euss. This is the default demonstration script I show to anyone who wants to have a quick overwiew on what Euss is able to do. I think I'll add some other ones about more specific functionnalities. The next one should be data synchonization for disconnected scenarios.

Les Techdays 2008 ne sont pas encore terminés que les premiers retours apparaissent d'ores et déjà. Pour preuve les deux articles par Olivier Rafal sur nos sessions.

TechDays : Entity Framework au niveau des autres ORM, pour Evaluant et TechDays, des pointures à suivre

N'hésitez pas à me donner vos impressions en laissant un commentaire.

Je serai présent en tant que speaker pour Dotnetguru lors des Techdays 2008 à Paris. Je co-animerai une session intitulée LINQ et Entity Framework en compagnie de Fabrice Marguerie.

En plus de cela Evaluant aura un stand sur le plateau partenaires, et chose exceptionnelle, vous pourrez venir discuter avec nos experts et moi même de vos projets durant les trois jours que durera l'évènement. Donc si vous avez besoin de conseil, et que vous avez un peu de temps entre deux sessions, venez nous voir. Ce n'est pas tous les jours que l'on peut bénéficier de consulting gratuitement, il faut en profiter. :D

Cela sera aussi l'occasion pour moi de vous faire profiter de nos retours d'expériences sur toute la gamme .NET et sans doute de vous faire économiser pas mal de temps de réflexion.

James Taylor will make a short visit in Paris to execute another great concert at the Olympia Theatre in Paris next April.

Guess what I did when I heard it :D

See you there ...

This is not something I would say like this, but one of the Euss users community said to me this morning.

Just marvellous! Your good support for interfaces kicks the ass of every ORM I've tested. I can't understand why anyone would want to use NHibernate when Euss exists

Euss, what else ?

Ok, the title is a bit too abusing, but what a surprise to see a post on Scott Guthrie's blog showing a new Linq technology called LINQ Dynamic Query Library.

Obviously it was released prior to my NLinq framework. Still, NLinq can do better things, for the moment :-/.

I have just released NLinq on CodePlex.

NLinq is a framework focusing on reimplementing the Linq functionnalities in Visual Studio .Net 2003 and Visual Studio 2005 (C# & VB .Net) by providing a Linq grammar parser and a "Linq To Objects" execution environment. With NLinq you can take advantage of major C# 3.0 features right now, without requiring it.

Example:

    query = new NLinqQuery(
        @"  from c in people
            let t = c.Age * 3
            where t % 2 == 0
            orderby t descending
            select new { c.Firstname, t }");

    linq = new LinqToMemory(query);
    linq.AddSource("people", people);

    foreach (object o in linq.Evaluate<IEnumerable>())
    {
        Console.WriteLine(o);
    } 

If like me you ever wondered how to convert an hexadecimal string repsentation into its decimal value, you certainly google'd it. Don't try, I did it for you, and I found nothing interesting but a million lines of useless code.

Instead try this:

Int32.Parse(
  "0B0C", System.Globalization.NumberStyles.AllowHexSpecifier
 );

In case you wonder how to do the opposite:

String.Format("{0:x}", 2828)

As ANTLR 3.0 is now out, I wrote an article on how to create a mathematical expressions evaluator in C# with it. You can find it here.

I am currently in the process of translating it in french for those who would like to wait this version.

At last the brand new version of the french TechHeadBrothers.com website owned by Laurent Kempé and his brother Mathieu goes live ! This website is mainly dedicated to .Net and provides a lot of very good technical articles.

But what is most interesting with this new version is that it is the first time Euss goes live with an application we did not make by ourselves. Actually Laurent was the major "debugger" of Euss and provided a lot of feddback to us. Now I think we reached the point that not only it is fully functional, but the performances are very good when we judge by the result.

I think Laurent will write an article explaining the whole architecture of the system, and that you'll be convinced by its simplicity and the efficiency of the result.

I forgot to mention that Euss is our brand new persistence framework including all functionnalities you have ever dreamed of:

• aop, dynamic proxies, code generation
• o/r mapping, XML, IMDB, Generic repositories
• .Net 1.1, .Net 2.0 specific versions
• Open source (MIT) with Professional Support

Long life to the new version of techheadbrothers.com !!!

At last, ANTLR v3 is available with C# bindings. I tested it and it works fine. Moreover, the new functionnalities allow simpler grammar definitions together with a more powerfull LL(*) algorithm.

For those who don't even know what ANTLR is:

ANother Tool for Language Recognition, (formerly PCCTS) is a language tool that provides a framework for constructing recognizers, compilers, and translators from grammatical descriptions containing Java, C#, C++, or Python actions.

With ANTLR you can define the grammar of any language, and get as a result a framework capable of analysing an entry in the language you described. For instance I use it to handle OPath expressions, and transform any OPath query in an object tree, easier then to handle than the original string.

From CodePlex itself:

CodePlex is an online software development environment for open and shared source developers to create, host and manage projects throughout the project lifecycle. It has been written from the ground up in C# using .NET 2.0 technology with Team Foundation Server on the back end. CodePlex is open to the public free of charge.

GotDotNet should still remain alive as this new platform is based on 2.0 and Team Foundation, and we know that not everybody is already using it. Would it be a solution for Team Foundation to enter the world of small teams projects ?

What do our gurus have to say about that ? Arnaud ? Nicolas ?

Yes, that's what I think about the future of DLinq. If you don't trust me just have a close look at the Data Access Blog. Pablo - ADO.Net Man - Castro had said a word about it during the PDC but did not show anything. Now there are two deep articles about the vision and one screencast showing it. It will be called ADO.Net 3.0, should ship with Orcas.

ADO.Net 3.0

And what is even greater is that if you love this techno and you want the same with enhanced relational mapping, XML support, database vendor independance, a cache provider, an "In Memory Database" provider, generic database, and distributed systems through remoting, just go there in a few days.

UPDATE: The resources seem to have been removed by Microsoft. May have been NDAed ...