Another article got published & DevCampus coming along

I guess this a two-subject post. Hopefully I'll start having more to blog about.

An article I wrote on integrating your website with Microsoft CRM got published today on Developer.com. If you've been wondering what Microsoft CRM is all about or if you've ever wondered how easy it is to write code to integrate something with it, you might want to check it out.

I also just finished up writing an article on using the nested set model (database design) to store breadcrumb link information for your website. I'll post a link to that whenever it gets published, too.

Also, I just got a cool new book from O'Reilly by Chris Date called "Database In Depth : Relational Theory for Practitioners" that I can't wait to read. First I have to finish reading Joe Celko's new "SQL Programming STYLE" book though. Both books are only about 200 pages so thankfully they're quick reads and don't provide much time to feel like you're getting bored with the content. I think more authors should follow this format. Write short, concise, to-the-point books in 300 pages or less. It's easy for me (and probably many others) to feel like there's no way I'm going to make it cover-to-cover through some 4 inch thick book that weighs as much as my 2 yr old daughter. Anyway, there are a few things I've read in Celko's book that I don't agree with but I appreciate that he stands by his standards and provides solid arguments to back his claims. That's more than I can say for several other technical books/authors I've read. I'll probably write a review of both books as I finish reading them.

P.S. DevCampus is coming along nicely (finally)...I've got the beginning bits and pieces finished and am really pleased with the page template / base page class design I've created. It's just flexible enough for what I need yet not overly complex. I have this sense where I'm usually able to "feel" whether I've got a design right (or not) after I've been using it for a little while and this one "feels" good to me. I'm going to give MasterPages in ASP.NET 2.0 a look to see if they could improve my ASP.NET 1.1 page template design but honestly I'm not sure how much better they can be. Anyway, I hope to have some screenshots of the site (just running from my local, non-internet-exposed web server) to show off pretty soon so stay tuned.