jeffaBlog

It’s been a looong time coming, but the first alpha site using jeffablogger is now live.

I’ve converted my webcomic, Funzietown, to use my MVC based jeffablogger instead of the un-named web-forms based blog/comic engine I made back in ‘08.

The webcomic is aimed at kids, so I’ve turned off a bunch of the features of jeffablogger. You can’t register, for instance, because if you keep contact info on a site that is marketed at children you have to verify ages. That sounds like a hassle and potential lawsuit to me, so I disabled registering.

The goal for the user experience for a reader is to look and work like every other blog or comic you’ve ever read.

The goal for the user experience for admins, editors, writers, and artists is to be as smooth and easy as possible. Of course you can’t see those bits yet on the beta site.

I have a few more features to add before declaring beta status (feature complete for this release). OK, I have a fair number of features I want to add, but I’ll try to constrain myself to what I can finish within the next month or so.

Once I reach beta status, I will add unit tests and concentrate on bug fixes until ready to release as open source. Once tests are in place and I feel like my code is pretty I’ll release the project to Codeplex.

As part of beta testing I’ll convert our user group site GGMUG.com and debut a science fiction site that I’ve been planning. That will give me three sites using the engine, so I should get pretty good feedback on bugs.

This is the text of a presentation I am making for GGMUG.com (Gwinnett, Georgia, Microsoft User Group).

Rather than post the PowerPoint ppt file, I’m going to extract the text here so you can read it without downloading a file.

This isn’t a long presentation (shooting for about 20 minutes), and I’m not an MVC expert. I’m just now getting started. As I get farther along, I plan to do a feature length presentation.

I’m not posting the demo here because it is just a walk through of the basic code you get when you File:New up a project.

What is MVC?

• Pattern (Model/View/Controller)
  • Hello! 1979 calling. They want their pattern back! Smalltalk! W00t!
• Microsoft Web Framework
  • OPEN SOURCE
  • Really
  • NOT an April Fool’s Joke

Design Pattern

• Model
  • Data
• View
  • UI
• Controller
  • Biz logic and plumbing

How is it different?

• No "heavy" controls
• No code behind
• Not event driven
  
• Closer to the metal (well, more direct control of HTML rendered)
• More URL control

Why use it?

• Separation of concerns
• Test Driven Development
• Code gen
• Them Rails guys is cool (apologies to David Letterman)

Where does it fit?

• Asp.Net
  • Web Forms
  • MVC

Quick demo

• Every time the demo breaks, take a drink
• BSOD means you have to chug your drink

Good examples

• StackOverflow.com
• NerdDinner.com
• Cruvee.com

Requirements

• ASP.NET 3.5 SP1
• Windows Server that will run ASP.NET 3.5…
• Visual Studio 2008
• Keyboard
• Mouse
• Internet connection
• Electricity
• Food
• Oxygen

Links

• http://www.asp.net/mvc/
• http://aspnetmvcbook.s3.amazonaws.com/aspnetmvc-nerdinner_v1.pdf
• http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/default.aspx
• http://www.hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=152
• http://www.hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=129
• http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=433
• http://haacked.com/

Microsoft Developer Evangelist Glen Gordon was on hand at last night's meeting and told us about the upcoming ASP.Net University to be held at their office over in Alpharetta.

This is a great opportunity to spend a day learning about ASP.Net directly from Microsoft. Did I mention the price? Free. Better than free, they will feed you and give away some prizes.

Check out Glen's blog for details here.

I delivered a short talk about table partitioning at the Gwinnett, Georgia, Microsoft User Group meeting last night.

Here is a link to the Power Point:    Table_Partitioning.ppt (163.00 kb)

I basically presented basic what-is-it information and summarized the tests from my last post.

Here is a text version of part of the presentation.

What is the problem?

• Your table is like a dictionary
• A GIANT, unalphabetized dictionary
• To find a word, you have to search EVERY page

Add an index!

• If you add an index, you can find the page number of the word you want, but…
• You still have to flip through a bunch of pages to find that page

How about an Encyclopedia?

• Split your book up into multiple books
• Group your words alphabetically into books – One letter per book
• Flip through the pages of only ONE book
• Much faster!

How do you do that to a table?

• Decide how you want to break up your table – pick a column
• Create a set of Filegroups
• One per partition
• Can spread over multiple drives
• Create a Partition Function
• Create a Partition Scheme
• Build table that references the Partition Scheme

Gotchas?

• If you query without the partition column, it could actually be slower than a non-partitioned table
• If you hit multiple partitions it can be slow
• Threading in SQL Server 2005
• Supposed to be better in 2008
• Locking… very sad
• 2005 can lock ENTIRE TABLE
• 2008 can lock a partition

Benefits

• Speed
• Search fewer records to find what you want
• Spread files over multiple drives

Maintenance

• Work with filegroups
• Set filegroup as read-only when no longer active
• Back up inactive filegroups ONCE
• Back up active filegroups daily, etc.

Well, I AM having a second post! This is a personal best.

I wanted to talk a bit about something I'm working on at the moment. A couple of friends and I are starting a new user group for our area. We are developers who have worked with a variety of technologies over the years. I have spent years working with Java and Oracle PL/SQL, but since 2005 we have done much of our work with Microsoft technologies like C#, .Net, ASP.Net and the .Net Compact Framework.

We came to Microsoft via the Pocket PC. We all work for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution writing software primarily to support the delivery of the paper. We were originally using the Palm OS for handhelds, Java for the web app and Oracle for the database. It worked pretty well, but we bought a syncing package that to us was a black box. It broke down frequently and there was little we could do about it. The company that made it was bought by a consulting company who dropped the product leaving us high and dry.

After several missteps trying to replace it, we decided to write our own. I had just bought a Pocket PC myself and wanted to learn to code for it. It didn't take long before I realized that we could ease much of our suffering if we went with Pocket PC instead of Palm. We could use one language to write code on the handhled, web app, database, and server apps. That meant we could divide work more logically, rather than each being in totally unrelated technical silos.

Long story somewhat shortened: we've worked with Microsoft since '05 and they have been very helpful. Our sync software has worked great and given us very few problems. We want to get involved with the local user group community, but there is a problem. Geography.

The city of Atlanta is very small. The region known as Metro Atlanta is HUGE. We live in a part of the Metro area known as Gwinnett County. For us it would take at least an hour to get to the Atlanta meetings during rush hour traffic. Rush hour traffic here is pretty much defined as all hours other than 2-3 AM.

For that reason we decided to form our own user group: the Gwinnett, Georgia, Microsoft User Group (GGMUG). Our first meeting will be May 8 at the Gwinnett Justice and Administration Center Gwinnett Technical College in Lawrenceville. We have two great speakers lined up and so far about 25 people signed up to attend.

I'll post more info here as we go. I'm also posting to the GGMUG website. I'm trying to keep the posts there down to a minimum so I don't wind up obscuring information that people need about meetings.

I'm very excited about GGMUG and looking forward to our first meeting. We're planning to meet every second Thursday.