Can't Grok, Won't Grok

Another item on my Tech ToDo is MVC Frameworks. I have been meaning to get in to MVC frameworks for ASP.NET pretty much since I first heard of them so it has been great to finally get a chance to sit down and have a tinker. What is MVC? MVC stands for Model View Controller – it’s a software design pattern that aims to separate the concerns of: The Presentation of the Data (The View) How the data needs to be viewed should not impact any other code. Code should take the data and then build its own representation based purely on that. For example, if we had an awesome Philly steak and cheese sandwich, we could present it in a number of ways - we could have a photo, we could have a video of someone chowing down on it, or we could just put how it makes us feel on plane banner. What changes about the actual sandwich? Nothing. Presentation changes should not require changes in the data. The Data Itself (The Model) The model is basically the heart of the data. This is where we...

Wanting to play with the different technologies on my “ Tech ToDo ” and following on from my first Tech Day with NHibernate , I wanted to play with Microsoft’s Entity Framework (EF). EF is (to my understanding) a beefed up version of LINQ to SQL . So, I happily go ahead and download the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 , install and eagerly run off to add my EF data model to my project.. But I can’t, there is no item for it in the templates. The tutorial (actually an MVC one) said there should be, the readme said there should be, but there wasn’t. Steps Attempted (to no avail) Following a tweet from @JeremySkinner , I checked that the assemblies ( System.Data.Entity* ) had installed OK to the reference assemblies folder ( C:\Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\v3.5 ) – they had. Next please! Following on from that, I then thought about the version of Visual Studio I am running.. Mine is actually under the DreamSpark license as I am currently studying with a MS part...

In my previous post “ My Tech ToDo – I can haz skillz? ” I mentioned that I had reduced my hours at work, giving me 2 days a month to do whatever the hell I want. I have decided to devote these days to a given tech or subject to sit down and really have a chance to get acquainted. Now, I know one day is most likely not enough to completely grok a tech or subject, hell some of them can take a lifetime to master – but it is a heck of a lot more than I have been able to do previously. Anyway, the first of my Tech Days was dedicated to NHibernate . What is NHibernate? Briefly for anyone unsure: NHibernate is an Object Relational Mapping (ORM) tool. These are designed to map the complex data/models created by Object-Orientated Programming to the more simplistic scalar types used by databases. This problem is known as the “ Object-Relational Impedance Mismatch ”, which is normally overcome by creating a data access layer (DAL) which will take the complex objects, tra...