Dynamic Data - Success or Failure? - azure

Azure, probably ASP.NET Webforms. We're building a management interface for about 8 tables. Usual CRUD :-)
2 backend users, and doesn't need to look flash.
We'd like to use Mindscape's LightSpeed as the ORM tool
Question: Is Dynamic Data worth pursuing? (Mindscape have a connector to DD).
We've also got the Telerik Suite which is next on the list to check out.
Rapid development here is key.

For rapid development, Dynamic Data is great. In its current form it has some good extension points. However, I think you are stuck with either Entity Framework or Linq to SQL for O/RM solutions. Not necessarily a bad thing for an 8 table app, but something to consider.

Related

When does it make sense to use ADF?

I'm in a company re-writing the existing applications, using the full Oracle stack, in a SOA way.
Everything is nice and so on until we're starting to discuss the UI. We are wondering what to use as web framework in order to web application.
In the first hand, we are developers in love with NodeJS and frameworks like Ember.js, we're developing today (until the application is migrated) in Ruby on Rails (so working with Macs). In the other hand, Oracle is providing ADF which is obviously well integrated in the Oracle stack and so on. But when we compare ADF to the way we are working today (Ruby on Rails) or the way we would work in the future (with Ember.js for instance) it looks like less development, more point and click, with an heavy framework.
What are the advantages of ADF ?
What are the right domains where ADF make sense ?
How popular is ADF ? (Especially in the enterprise context)
How hard is the learning of ADF for someone developing today with Ruby On Rails (IDE is Sublime Text, so all is about writing code -- mouse not needed) while for ADF JDeveloper seems mandatory (seems a large use of the mouse and less writing code ?)
I hope my post is understandable.
I've used in production java frameworks like Struts, Struts2, JBoss Seam, Tapestry, Spring, Hibernate and I've moved to ADF 6 years ago, therefore I can't comment on how ADF compares with NodeJS or Ember.js.
What are the advantages of ADF ?
ADF has in Jdeveloper a strong development tool support. If your team is not technically very strong in Java, it might be the right tool for you.
What are the right domains where ADF make sense ?
Web applications providing Desktop-like experience: that means complex input forms, complex querying - screens with lots of data and business rules. By far the most productive framework I've used when building these kind of web applications.
How popular is ADF ? (Especially in the enterprise context)
ADF is a niche at the moment. Though it is strongly supported by Oracle. Most of Oracle's products - e.g. Fusion Apps - are based on ADF, so ADF is here to stay.
How hard is the learning of ADF for someone developing today with Ruby
On Rails (IDE is Sublime Text, so all is about writing code -- mouse
not needed) while for ADF JDeveloper seems mandatory (seems a large
use of the mouse and less writing code ?)
At start, it will look like you are having good progress in relatively short period of time. Then, you will realise that even though Jdeveloper does 'everything' for you, you need to understand every piece of code JDeveloper generates. ADF has a steep learning curve (though you may find others telling you otherwise), it requires a different way of thinking web application development, especially difficult for developers with previous web experience: ADF is using a STATEFUL business layer. So, unless you have been using Stateful Session Beans before, there are good chances to mess up your first ADF Design - is what I keep seeing as ADF consultant. But once you've learn it, productivity-wise is fantastic.
From innovation point of view, ADF sounds like listening to Vanilla Ice in your Beats headsets: it is based on XML, it uses JSF, no sign of dependency injection on ADF Faces. Still, is Ajax-based.

Azure Mobile Services - complex processing

I am fairly new to Azure and mobile services, and all the examples and tutorials I can find for the table and API scripts are fairly simplistic.
If I have some processes that are fairly complex and rely on pulling information from many different tables and processing contingent on that data, should I be doing that somewhere other than the API scripts? I am new to node.js as well so maybe that's the problem but I was wondering if there is a more appropriate place for business logic, such as some bridge I need to add to my stack?
There are a lot of examples of how to use MSSql object which is used to query tables and Node in general available. A healthy search will reveal just about anything you need. Since you said you are new to Node.js consider using the .NET backend instead. It is based on Entity Framework and there are lots of Entity framework examples out there for you too. Finally, there are some really good examples of complex logic being used in the back ends in the sample code available: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/develop/mobile/ios-samples/ (pick your client OS) and here: http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/topics/mobile/ and here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/azuremobile/
Let us know if you have specific questions!

Saas model data isolation

I curently have an application writen in php using the symfony framework. Rather than have seperate installs for customer on a hosted server, I would like to move to as SaaS model with one install for all customers posible running of google code or another cloud based service. I am not tied to PHP though i would like to have the benifits of a good framework.
So the chalenge: If all customers are using the same application we then have fin a way isolating each customers data. Customers do for eample have admin access and can manager their own users and privlages. At a simplistic leve you could just have a organisation identifier in each table take and add that to all database operations. However most application framewors use and ORM of some kind, and I have not been able to find one that will easly / seemlesly facinatate this at a leve the has minimum impact on the application code.
Has anyone looked at this, are there any good aproaches to this problem?
As Itay says, a multi-tenant system is a common requirement. A while back I was doing some research on this problem and came across a pretty good presentation on the different ways to handle this issue, and the pros and cons of each: http://aac2009.confreaks.com/06-feb-2009-14-30-writing-multi-tenant-applications-in-rails-guy-naor.html
This particular presentation is targeted to a Rails audience, but the principles are the same as with any language.
The approach you described is common, and PHP (One of the strengths) will allow you to comparatively easily go into the ORM code and modify it to your needs.
Second approach is to create a separate DB for each organization and a joint DB for shared resources.
A bit of a design challenge (but just a bit).
if you are really big, then you will even need to consider a separate DB server for each organization (I would say this is a serious overkill in 99.99999% of the cases).
This MSDN article gives you a very good overview of Data Architecture in Multi-tenancy: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479086.aspx

Subsonic - let customers switch the database

I am new to subsonic and I'd like to know about the best practices regarding the following scenario:
Subsonic supports multiple database systems, e.g. SQLServer and MySQL. Our customers need to decide while deploying our application to their servers, which database system should be used. Long story short: the providerName, normally specified within the application configuration, should be configurable after the application is finished.
How can this be done? Do I have to generate seperate data libraries for each database system I want to support?
Thank you in advance
Marco
No you do not need to genarate seperate libraries.
How ever you can not use direct sql string as you understand but you need to go always using subsonic sql create code.
Also is good to make some tests on the diferent databases, because not all code have been 100% testes on every case.

SharePoint List like Data Access Interface

I am impressed by the way we programmatically access lists in SharePoint. I percieve it as a Data Access Layer, while modeling the database is as simple as defining the columns in the List.
I am looking for a tool OR an application that would give me similar interface to a database. Basically, for some reason I cannot use SharePoint and I don't wish to take up the responsibility of modeling, deploying and maintaining the database. I find the SharePoint way of persistence management acceptable and exciting.
Can anyone suggest me something even close to this.
BTW, my application is on ASP.Net and my preferred RDBMS is MS SQL Server.
If you don't want the overhead and expense of a Sharepoint installation, 90% of the time all you really need is WSS 3.0 (free with a windows server license).
For auto generated entity classes you can use Linq To Sharepoint (SPMetal)
For hand written POCO entities you can try using SharepointCommon ORM
Use NOSQL database like MongoDb or CouchDB which are schema less, allowing you to freely add fields to JSON documents without having to first define schema.

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