David Yack will be presenting on Exploring the Entity Framework for the Tulsa SQL Server Group!
I had to be in Los Angeles a couple weeks ago now for some cross training and to meet my awesome development team in person for the first time. You have to love the freedom that the internet provides telecommuters. Thank you IM, email, remote desktop, ftp, and on and on.
It just so happened that I found that David Yack, a Microsoft Regional Director and INETA Speaker, was presenting "Exploring the Entity Framework" to the San Gabriel Valley .NET Developers Group my first night in town. It was my first time actually seeing a presentation on the Entity Framework. I was definitely glad that Zain Naboulsi had just presented on LINQ Features in Visual Studio 2008 because he was sure to show the new LINQ to SQL Classes feature of Visual Studio 2008. You can really see how far the team has come with modeling between the LINQ to SQL Classes and the soon to be released Entity Framework 1.0. Follow them on their new blog: EFDesign.
To put it in away that any developer can understand: DAO, RDO, ADO, ADO.NET and now (ADO.NET) EF (Entity Framework).
Granted there a lot of other options when it comes to separating your data from you business logic, nHibernate, etc. and this is a version 1 product. In my opinion, it looks like it can improve the application architecture in many development departments and across many projects.
There has been some very vocal criticism by way of a "vote of no confidence" mostly from the nHibernate crowd. They do bring a lot of great points and it's obvious from the quick response of Tim Mallalieu, the Microsoft Program Manager leading the team, they are listening and setting their priorities for version 2. This is definitely something I wouldn't sign, because as D'Arcy put it "Our role is to learn." You simply can't move forward if something new is not offered and with my limited exposure to it, I must say it is a very nice step forward. Kathleen Dollard listed an even greater number of reasons to not sign the petition and I'm sure 99.9% of every developer out there would have to agree with her response to the Entity Framework Petition. Lastly, for those doing their proper research on the Entity Framework, Ward Bell, Product Manager for DevForce .NET by IdeaBlade, made several excellent valid real world business reasons in his response to the petition and why he wouldn't sign it.
I was very excited to hear, the day before flying to Los Angeles, that INETA is sending our first speaker to the Tulsa SQL Server Group. It is none other than David Yack! Woot! It's great knowing what the local developers are about to see in just a few weeks. I can't wait for David to share it with them. Thanks INETA!
I will see everyone on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 6:00pm for this terrific presentation!
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About dwalker
David Walker has over 15 years experience in application development with over 50% of that employed as a consultant with companies such as: Texaco, Bank of Oklahoma, Winner Communications (ESPN.com) and IBM Global Services. At the age of 14, he began his application development ambitions with a Commodore 64, BASIC, and a 300 baud modem. Even at that early age, he primarily focused on two specific application types: multi-user communities and database applications.
His hunger to learn as much as possible about development lead him through courses such as DBase III, DBase IV, Pascal, C, C++, Java, and several in UNIX. He started his development career first doing heavy processing with Access and VBA, then moved on to VB 3, Oracle, and Delphi. Visual Basic was one environment that remained constant for many years, including his very first .NET projects performed in Visual Basic.NET.
After working several years on very high end internal Corporate applications, the consultant company he was working for, sought out his ideas for actual software products that could be packaged and sold. He had already developed several prototypes of a dynamic portal application, before portals even became popular, so this became the logic decision and he became the Director of Product Development. Under his direction, a team of developers and graphic artists, took a skinning approach before that become popular, and completed the core portal application, and continued on to developer 15+ add-on modules, including things such as: Help Desk Ticket Systems, Change Control, Records Management, Human Resources, and many more applications. Eventually, it spun off into it's own separate company as KnowledgeGEAR, a complete intranet in the box solution.
Having worked as a consultant, he has had a experience with a very wide range of applications and architectures, at one time, even converting several Fox Pro and GW-Basic applications to VB 6 and ASP. His early training of Unix and the C language and years of experience with JavaScript, lead him very quickly to C#, where he has remained focused ever since.
He is the current President of the
Tulsa Developers .NET user group.. He has been an MCP since 2003 and MCAD and MCSD since 2005. He is currently pursuing his MCDBA and then on to MCSE.