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Herding Code 70: Sean Chambers on Migrations in .NET

This week on Herding Code, we talk to Sean Chambers about migrations in .NET with Fluent Migrator.

  • Sean talks about how Fluent Migrator originated from Migrator.NET
  • Sean discusses how the benefits of a semantic model in Fluent Migrator
  • K Scott and Sean discuss how you’d start using Fluent Migrator in a project
  • Sean talks about some useful features, like InsertData\
  • Jon asks about support for different databases
  • Scott K asks about the benefits of a migration framework over a simple directory of T-SQL scripts
  • We take a question from Aaron Lerch (@aaronlerch) on Twitter about how Fluent Migrator would work with Fluent NHibernate
  • Kevin asks about Schema Update
  • Kevin and Sean talk about possible inefficiencies with objects being added, changed, and removed in successive migrations
  • K Scott asks about extensibility hooks
  • Scott K asks about stored procedures, functions, user defined types, etc.
  • Jon asks about how Fluent Migrator relates to other .NET migration frameworks
  • We take a question from Aaron Jensen (@aaronjensen) on Twitter about the benefits of a migration framework since T-SQL is already a DSL
  • Lightning round: K Scott starts the lightning round by asking what refactoring operations everyone uses most
  • Lightning round: What’s your favorite VM software? (spoiler: VirtualBox wins by a wide margin)
  • Lightning round: What’s your favorite movie that involves an android?

Show Links:

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 70 – Sean Chambers on Migrations in .NET

[audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0070-Sean-Chambers-on-Migrations-in-dotNET.mp3]
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Herding Code 69: Scott Bellware on HTML Specialists

This week on Herding Code, Scott Bellware returns to talk about . 

  • Scott talks about the frustrations in working with “HTML Specialists”
  • Scott discusses the team issues caused by specialists in a software team who aren’t in touch with the entire product development cycle
  • The problem with handoffs: loss of workability
  • Eventually, things turn to the technology issue involved in working with HTML and CSS
  • Are HTML tables necessarily evil
  • Scott and Scott K discuss whether CSS purity is a premature optimization
  • Jon and Scott discuss whether clean markup can be deferred until the end of a project
  • Scott talks about the lunacy of delivering design work as “final”
  • Scott talks about how optimization fights with workability
  • Scott enumerates some of examples of websites which might not benefit from accessibility
  • Jon posits that tables might not be easier than CSS design, it’s just what we learned first
  • Scott K talks about how CSS floats drive him nuts
  • Scott talks about how crazy CSS is when viewed as a programming language
  • K Scott talks about some technological workarounds like lesscss
  • Scott talks about how he doesn’t see Silverlight as an improvement, because it brings along a lot of other challenges
  • Scott talks about how working in teams and in “small batches” solves the problems with handoffs
  • Scott talks about the joy of a January 1st project date

Show Links:

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 69 – Scott Bellware on HTML Specialists

[audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0069-Scott-Bellware-on-HTML-Specialists.mp3]
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Herding Code 68: New Year Shenanigans

In this episode of Herding Code, the gang talks about what happened last year and what they think will happen in the years to come.  Oh, and K Scott brings us the first lightning round of 2010!

  • How will the guys manage the show in 2010?  Google Docs and listener requests?
  • Are you bitter because today’s coder has little appreciation for how rough devs had it 10 years ago?
  • Phone wars. Big, smart ones. Will Android dethrone the iPhone?
  • Place your bets!  Biggest box office hit in 2010: Ironman 2 or The A-Team Movie?
  • You don’t see the Fail Whale quite as often, but it’s still fun to listen to the guys continue to complain about Twitter and its clients.
  • Next ten years – will C# continue to rule the .NET roost?
  • Ever ask WolframAlpha “Who uses this site?”
  • What secret project is John Lam working on?  Will IronRuby live on?
  • You love maps, right? K Scott does too.   Who knew?
  • Ever wonder if the iSlate will take over the (Kindle) world?
  • Are you planning to improve your skill set in 2010? How?
  • Really? Jon’s default search engine is Bing! How’s about that Infinite Scroll!

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 68 – New Year Shenanigans

[audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0068-New-Year-Shenanigans.mp3]

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 67: Udi Dahan on Scalability

You’re interested in web application scalability and availability, right?  Of course you are!  Well, you’re in luck because Udi Dahan – enterprise development expert, SOA specialist and author of NServiceBus – joins the guys on this week’s episode of Herding Code. 

  • Jon kicks off the show by asking Udi if one can run a high-availability and high-scalability site (like stackoverflow.com) on two servers with ASP.NET?  Udi asks “how high is high” and talks about the importance of defining the scope of the architectural problem.
  • Udi comments on the how site behavior (high reads or writes, static or dynamic content, etc) dictates the way availability and scalability concerns can be handled.
  • Udi talks about how websites can be broken into fragments and how one can take advantage of content distribution networks and caches.
  • Udi stresses that high-availability inherently makes scaling more difficult and how scalability is a multidimensional cost function.
  • Kevin asks about common scalability mistakes and solution patterns. Udi replies with talk of SOA, web services, REST, one-way messaging, pub/sub and offloading things to the background in an asynchronous way.
  • Kevin follows up with additional questions: Why don’t more developers turn to messaging patterns to solve their scalability issues and can one introduce scalability changes incrementally?
  • Udi discusses the scalability patterns employed by RIA Services for Silverlight and gives his opinion on Azure as a scalability system.
  • Scott K asks about geographical distribution and Udi gets to the heart of the matter – high-availability means writing data to multiple places which means you are slowing your system down.
  • K Scott asks Udi about the AppFabric service bus provided by Microsoft and how it compares to already available distributed cache solutions like .NET Service Bus, MassTransit, and NServiceBus.

[Note: The sound quality for Udi’s voice is kind of rough. We tried to clean it up, and this is as good as it’s going to get. Just pretend we’re talking to him on a CB and things will be fine]

Show Links:

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 67 – Udi Dahan on Scalability

[audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0067-Udi-Dahan-on-Scalability.mp3]

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!