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I hope the DotnetNuke Core decides to use the DAL II proposal, but if they don't... |
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By Michael Washington on
2/4/2006 8:43 PM
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Here are the reasons I will be "ok" if the Core does not use the DAL II:
The MAIN reason we did the DAL II proposal was because the development configuration and complexity and amount of code needed for the DAL was prohibitive to module development. That has changed with DNN4 and I hope my Tutorial proves it.
The Core has to deal with priorities and the current DAL does work. Also note, it was slightly altered for DNN 4!
So yeah it's odd that after putting nearly 100 hours into DALII I'm willing to let the Core off the hook.
I cannot ignore the fact that they addressed issues in other ways.
- The DAL was altered to not require a separate project. This alone was half the problem!
- The DAL was altered to support Generics. This is a big deal. Generics ...
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DAL II can help with DotNetNuke installation |
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By Michael Washington on
8/1/2005 3:36 PM
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Something I left out of the proposal was one of the advantages of using the Enterprise Blocks to help with DotNetNuke installation.
• The Enterprise blocks store the database configuration in a dataconfig.config file not the web.config file so it can be updated on-the-fly. It can also be encrypted.
• Because the database configuration can be updated on the fly it would now be possible to:
o Distribute DotNetNuke using Microsoft Access
o When a person wants to upgrade to SQL, they:
Log in as HOST and go to settings
Put in their SQL server login info
DotNetNuke checks:
• To see if it can connect.
• It can also see if it’s and upgrade (and if so perform the upgrade)
• If it’s a fresh install it installs the objects and verifies everything is running.
Only then does DotNetNuke change the configuration in ...
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Well it's done... |
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By Michael Washington on
7/31/2005 5:13 PM
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The proposal is finally complete and somehow it will get to the Core (there really isn't a formal process so I am just going to make a post on the DotNetNuke forum).
I am now going to get back to developing modules. It's all I ever wanted to do anyway :)
Special thanks has to go to Kevin Weir for getting this thing moving and writing the original code that was never changed. It is the code that is in the final proposal. Therefore he is the author of it. All I did was create a Access provider that works with his code. Still it was really a hard thing for me to do and took me nearly 100 hours to figure out.
I feel we accomplished every goal we set out to complete. It feels good. Thank you for your support.
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How the Access provider works |
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By Michael Washington on
7/10/2005 5:29 PM
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If you have been following my blog you will have a good idea of the challenges I ran into in creating the Access provider. Here is a overview of how it works.
Basically I am simulating stored procedures in Microsoft Access using the Enterprise Library Application Blocks. Microsoft Access will support stored procedures but only simple limited ones.
My solution was to create an ELAB OleDB provider that would use reflection to load an assembly that would contain methods that would simulate the functionality of stored procedures in Microsoft Access.
To do this I altered the OleDB provider to intercept any call that was for a stored procedure. An “InvokeMethod” class attempts to find an entry in an .XML file that has the same name of the stored procedure. If it does not have an entry, it looks for all assemblies that begin with “DALII.Providers.AccessProvider_” and rebuilds the XML file. The XML file contains the name of all th ...
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Benefits of working on the DAL II proposal |
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By Michael Washington on
7/5/2005 7:45 PM
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I guess one of the major benefits of working on the DAL II proposal is that I have finally learned C#. The Enterprise Data Blocks code are written in C#. I got a great book on C# from Murach.com. I had avoided learning C# before because the syntax seemed very odd. Once I cracked open the Murach book I realized that C# and vb.net are very much alike. I guess this is because all the languages built on the .Net framework have to be somewhat alike or they would not compile to the CLR (Common Language Runtime). I learned that things like Enumerations can be really useful. I then realized that they are also in vb.net I was just not using them. Now my VB code is better.
Another benefit from working on this project is that I developed a good way to distribute my sample web applications. have a web based picture gallery called "Def Gallery" that I give away on my
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Success! |
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By Michael Washington on
7/2/2005 10:53 AM
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I finally have the Access provider working. you can now switch between the Kevin Weir SQL code and the Access provider by simply changing the lines below in the "dataConfiguration.config" file
<instances>
<instance name="DotNetNuke" type="Sql Server" connectionString="Sql Connection String" />
<instance name="DotNetNuke_oleDB" type="OleDB" connectionString="OleDB Connection String" />
</instances>
The instance that is called "DotNetNuke" will be the one that run ...
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Access provider is working... kinda... |
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By Michael Washington on
6/26/2005 10:00 AM
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Well the good news is I am able to get my Access provider to show the surveys (I am using the DotNetNuke Survey project code that is used in the Kevin Weir code example).
The problem I am having now is that is crashes when I try to update the database. I had previously made a non-DotNetNuke test project where I was able to update the surveys and it worked. Therefore, the problem must be the integration with DotNetNuke.
Needless to say it may take me a few weeks to work this out.
I am so glad I set the date to deliver the proposal in August :)
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Ready for the last stage |
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By Michael Washington on
6/21/2005 6:36 AM
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Well I finally have everything working in my sample that is the code from the "Kevin Weir" Survey module.
I have the return parameters working and the dynamically created XML file that finds the .dll
All I need to do now is invoke the Access Provider on the "Kevin Weir" Survey module and it's done.
Hopefully I will have something to release by next week.
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