Wow

All I can say is wow!!!

MNF cont

So Jimmy Kimmel will not be allowed on MNF anymore. The sad thing is that I thought is appearance was the best part of the broadcast on Monday. He did comment on some touchy subjects but it was funny. Just because tom Brady looks really good throwing the ball right now does not mean that someone can not make fun of the fact that he has impregnated his two model girlfriends. His comments about Joe Theismann although low, are probably accurate. Above I was saying how the broadcast crew were to blame for the crappy MNF product, but now i think it is Jay Rothman who is ruining what was once the greatest sports show on television.

Monday Night Football

Am I the only one who has a hard time listening to the announcers on Monday Night Football? The crew of Tirico, Jaworski and Kornheiser has to be one of the worst.

Don't get me wrong I think Mike Titico does a really good job. His play by play call of the game is the only saving grace of the entire broadcast. The problems come any time Kornheiser opens his mouth. His commentary is usually pointless and it seems his only responsibility is to act like a fan and ask questions to Ron Jaworski.

I used to rip on Madden and Michaels, but they were way better than this crew. Monday Night Football is supposed to be the best the NFL has to offer any given week, shouldn't we expect the same from the Network that broadcasts the game?

Why is Microsoft One Step Behind

It seems whenever Microsoft's Patterns and Practices (PnP) team releases a new product there is always a feeling of that finally they have caught up to the open source world of products. The problem is the releases seem to be one step behind. Enterprise Library along with the software factories, don't quite add up to products like Spring.net, NHibernbate, and Log4Net. The Validation block is quite similar to EVIL yet delivered months later. The Microsoft test framework, created to compete with NUnit, is nothing spectacular. It really doesn't offer any advantageous features.

I tend to use the PnP product as much as I can. I have been a backer of the Web Client Software Factory. Using the factory along with the Enterprise Library offering is close to Spring. But it still lacks. Features that NHibernate offer is completely missing. The other thing is I feel like I need to change the way I develop to fit into the PnP way, when I use Spring.Net or other opens source products, they tend to just work with me. The tools I use should not fight me.

I have had high hopes for the PnP team. I was hoping that the products they released would be ground breaking and innovative and truly help me in my day to day work. Instead they try to replicate other open source products and challenge me in how I use them. If the PnP team continues this practice they will always be one step behind.


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Repository Factory

I just got done watching the two screencasts on the Repository Factory by David Hayden.

The Repository Factory is a lightweight O/R Mapper created by the Patterns and Practices team. It was part of the Web Service Factory but the team decided to pull it out and make it separate and usable by all.

Before I go much further I want to say I have never used an O/R Mapper on any application. Even though there are those here where I work who do use them, and they remind how disappointed that Microsoft does not include O/R Mapping in .Net. For a while MS promised us ObjectSpaces to be part of .Net 2.0 but it never made the final cut. Currently ADO.Net Entity framework is due to be released in .Net 3.5. This framework could serve as an O/R Mapper, but from what I here it might be a bit lacking.

Anyways back to the Repository Factory. There were some things i like and others i did not. First the items I found nice.

1. It can generate all you business entities, and data access classes.
   
2. It uses interface when creating repositories allowing for loose coupling.
3. The mapping of interfaces to concrete classes is handled in the config file.
   
4. It handles the mapping of entities to data classes.

Now for what I did not like.

1. I didn't like the fact I was forced to use stored procedures. I used to be a huge fan of stored procedures, but after noticing how much extra complexity stored procs add to deployments.
2. Entities same as database table. What if I have an entity that does not map back to one table, but multiple tables.
3. Lack of complex entities.
   
4. Naming
   

I here NHibernate handles most of what I don't like, but then I am reminded, that Repository Factory is lightweight. Nhibernate is not.

So check out Repository Factory and the screencasts.



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