The EntitySpaces 2008 Beta II is now available. The version number is 2008.0.0427.0 and is available for download now on our home page. You should uninstall any prior ES2008 alpha or beta that you may have installed. You can run ES2007 and ES2008 side-by-side. Do not install ES2008 over the top of ES2007. EntitySpaces 2008 has proven to be a big undertaking. Every EntitySpaces template has been rewritten using our new metadata engine and is now supported in both MyGeneration and CodeSmith, many were converted from VBScript to C#. However, from this point forward we start knocking off issues on our roadmap in rapid fire fashion. We are a little behind on our May 15th release date, but not too far. Not only is the trial available for download but both the Developer version and Source version are available to customers as well.
The testing behind this release is tremendous. We have two code generators in play, C# and VB.NET templates, and to top it off we had to debug Oracle subquery issues with messages like "ORA-923 No worky, try again" (kidding, but only slightly). Throw in database independence, the Compact Framework, and you really have your hands full. However, we are over the hump now and can see the light. This is a little off topic but we cannot wait to put up our Silverlight demo showing EntitySpaces working hand-in-hand with Silverlight. Our Silverlight demo is being worked on by Jon Davis and when we saw his first cut we were very impressed, Jon is a very sharp guy indeed.
We've made some good changes too with our installs. Both our Trial and Developer versions install exactly in the same folder structures. This will avoid confusion for those folks who use the EntitySpaces Trial for a large part of their development process and then purchase the Developer version before going live. Now you can simply install the developer version right over the top of the trial and not worry about changing reference paths. This beta comes with all providers, including our Compact Framework providers, it also comes with a SQL CE desktop provider in addition to the Compact Framework version. The beta will automatically install into both MyGeneration 1.2 and 1.3 folders and add support for CodeSmith. See the Getting Started documents on your menu after installation. There is a "Getting Started.PDF" for both MyGeneration and CodeSmith. Just a quick note for our MyGeneration customers. If you have any user meta data defined for aliases or Oracle or PostgreSQL sequences be sure to run the UserData template. It will convert the MyGeneration user data file to our new format upon first run. From that point on you maintain your user meta data via our UserData template and not through MyGeneration.
You can see by the image on the right that the runtimes are easily found in the Runtimes folder. We have both .NET 2.0 and 3.5 assemblies as well as Compact Framework assemblies (we now use CF and not Ce for those in our naming convention). Also notice that the CodeSmith templates are under the EntitySpaces 2008 folder. The "Getting Started.PDF" for CodeSmith will show you how to setup a Template Folder Shortcut in CodeSmith, it's a snap.
Our ES2007 EntitySpaces demo still hasn't been converted thus our ES2008 demo is very lightweight. We are going to rewrite it and not just convert it so that's the reason why we've held off. There could be some minor breaking changes coming when we tackle a few things on the roadmap, however that's not the usual case for EntitySpaces. We do want to address a few things to make your lives easier though.
We really hope a lot of our users start taking a serious look at ES2008, our Subquery and Casting support is very powerful and we will have a ton of enhancements rolling out soon as we head for the official release. We have also prototyped LINQ to SQL with EntitySpaces. And even more exciting when talking to Jon Davis about Silverlight we spoke about adding the very popular EntitySpaces DynamicQuery API to our proxies as an option. You could then issue full ES2008 dynamic queries from within Silverlight (down in the client) and from other situations such as WCF conversations where you might not have EntitySpaces on the client. All of this is to say that when we release EntitySpaces 2008 that is not the end, but the beginning.
We are very excited about where we are going and have a great vision for EntitySpaces. Not only can we run on Mono, Medium Trust, the Compact Framework, but we can provide seamless support for Silverlight as well. Mike Griffin will be demonstrating a lot of these high end features at the Indy ALT.NET meeting on May 15th.
So download the ES2008 Trial and if you hit a snag please post on the forums and we'll get you a speedy response.
From mobile devices to large scale enterprise solutions in need of serious transaction support, EntitySpaces can meet your needs. Whether you’re writing an ASP.NET application with medium trust requirements, a Mono application, or a Windows.Forms application, the EntitySpaces architecture is there for you. EntitySpaces is provider independent, which means that you can run the same binary code against any of the supported databases. EntitySpaces is available in both C# and VB.NET. EntitySpaces uses no reflection, no XML files, and sports a tiny foot print of less than 200k. Pound for pound, EntitySpaces is one tough, dependable .NET architecture.
The EntitySpaces Team
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EntitySpaces LLC
Persistence Layer and Business Objects for Microsoft .NET
http://www.entityspaces.net