sfeldman.NET

Today I had to look into persisting some of the data from the new system we are building into existing legacy system for backwards compatibility until the old system can retired (data that is required for the old applications/services that is a product of the new system). The database was MySql. The new system is leveraging FluentNHibernate to do the Domain objects persistence. The legacy system has no relational tables, and it’s just a matter of inserting information into the legacy DB. Since FluentNHibernate was not a good fit for the job, I looked into leveraging raw ADO.NET to do the simple job. And I couldn’t. Raw ADO.NET feels ugly after you get used to an ORM. So I thought about alternative, Linq to SQL. Well, Linq to MySql to be precise. I found DbLinq project which I highly recommend if you want Linq to any non MS SQL database (Oracle, MySql, SqlLite, Ingres, etc.)

Our current project is moving towards the final phase. This is going to be the 1st release, and I am quiet excited to see how team work is transforming a bunch of stickies and tests into a real system. This is how our whiteboard looks like (done-done part was not captured, but it’s definitely there and has a significant amount) and tests result trend based on builds Hudson CI is running.

I am amazed. Not everyday you can find a great application that just works the way you expect it to work. Hudson is our teams’ CI engine of choice. We used CruiseControl, but it is no where close to what Hudson is capable.

I know there are lots of good developers in Calgary. I know for sure lots of them feel sort of puzzled if they do things the right way. If you have a chance, get your answers at the course JP is giving in Calgary again – absolutely worth it. As someone who took the course a year ago, I can testify you will not be disappointed, unless code is not what you love to do. Yes, love to do, and not like, since to get through the course you gotta be loving programming. What will this course give you? I think some of the most valuable things a developer can ask for:

I would like to learn Ruby for .NET (I think it’s out there). But I am also addicted to BDD development style. Can anyone recommend a good book that will teach Ruby through testing?

Today we had a discussion about having strict mocks for all of our dependencies in code. Reason - to force the tests to serve as a safety net for production code. I will try to explain pros  and cons of this approach from the point of view myself is found.

In my previous post I talked about efficiency of whiteboard with stickies as a tracking tool for a project progress. During last iteration, our PM has suggested to “color code” features with different color stikies. Boy it worked great. Apparently, this is a great way to ease progress reading for a specific feature.

Anyone can recommend on good Domain Modeling (not design) books? Thank you.