SubSonic Migrations Without SubSonic

Lately some folks have been asking about Migrations with SubSonic 3.0 and where they've gone. I've been meaning to post on this for a while, and I think now is a good time to do it.

Using Mongo With LINQ

Lately I’ve been working with Mongo, creating a C# driver with Karl Seguin and Andrew Theken (and James Avery and Jason Alexander) and today I checked in some optimizations that made me really stoked and I thought I would share. In short – I think we have a roundly working (but young) Linq provider for MongoDB.

A Testable PayPal IPN with Rails 2.3

I’ve been building out an IPN (PayPal’s Instant Payment Notification) responder using Rails 2.3.5 recently and managed to get it to work with Mongo, Cucumber, and Pickle without mocking and by testing pure form posts to the IPN in an automated way using RSPec’s post method. That’s a mouthful – but here’s what I have.

Missing Screencasts

One the big issues with Software as a Service is when the service disappears. You might expect this from a small company – but from Microsoft? In fairness I had lots of warning – but all in all I had about 40 videos up there – all of the MVC storefront stuff, Kona, SubSonic, and other things. Migrating to another service (which I get to pay for) seems a little bait and switch to me – so I’ve moved them to my server here.

Building The Conversation

I’ve just turned on comment moderation for my blog – the first time I’ve done so, ever. I had a policy that I won’t delete a comment unless the author was a spammer, used racial/gender/preference slurs, or verbally attacked another commenter. Lately – since I’ve been writing some cheese-moving posts no doubt – I’ve had to read comments that would rather attack me personally than discuss the issue at hand. I even had one commenter suggest that we could chat on Skype so he could explain why I’ve “become an asshole”. A generous offer, no doubt, but I’m not into troll bloodsport and moreover I’m trying to help out the community without derailing the topic into my personal failings. Maybe I am a dick, perhaps I don’t know a thing. It’s OK if you think so, but you have to be a bit more skilled about telling me about it now.

NoSQL – A Practical Approach, Part 1

In my last post I took a look at possible approaches to using NoSQL and Reporting, and many people wanted to see what this might look like in practice. In part one, below, I’ll show you ways to work with a NoSQL solution (in this case DB4O) in ways that you will find pretty familiar. I’ll also show you the freedom you can have as a developer when you stop thinking relationally.

Reporting In NoSQL

I’m a big fan of giving relational systems the boot when it comes to persisting application data. The more I work with document (or OO) databases, the more I feel really, really dumb for doing it any other way. One question that comes up a lot in conversation, however, is “dude what about reporting – you can’t do that with NoSQL very well now can ya?” and the answer is “yes, correct. You can’t”. As with all things programming: right tool for the right job.

Sharpening The Saw

I had an interesting experience when building out Tekpub with James Avery: I’m a tad rusty at “real world” work. The work I’ve done over the last 3-4 years has basically been instructional/tutorial based and I know the technologies well – it’s the bending of those technologies to real business concerns that I’ve let “rust up” a bit. I’d like to change that – so if you or your team have some part time/remote work, lemme know!