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I almost can't believe the great news that came from MS today. That's right, the ADO.NET Entity Framework has been delayed ! I bet most of you think I'm being sarcastic, but I am serious. I've got at least three reasons why this is good news to me. First, this gives Linq to Sql a better opportunity to thrive. Linq to Sql is the "simpler" OR/M that's looking good enough for the vast majority of cases, while ADO.NET EF is far more complex -- and yet most gurus only wanted to talk about the EF. Next, since ADO.NET EF is so complicated, it absolutely must have a great designer ship concurrently, which was not the plan. MS has apparently accepted this feedback since this is at least the publicly given rationale for the delay in shipping the EF. Finally, and this one may not pan out, but it is my own hope that ADO.NET EF is being re-aligned somewhat with Linq to Sql. These two O/RMs are similar enough to share at least some code, and I believe that some of the MS guys have hinted at this too. So I'm happy that at first there will be one O/RM -- Linq to Sql. The gurus may be disappointed, but the vast majority of MS devs will be new to O/RMs anyhow, and Linq to Sql will be good enough. Very much like my simple WilsonORMapper has been so widely used. 
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The Atlanta Code Camp was today, so I finally got to give my LINQ and O/R Mapping talk that I've been preparing. I tried to have minimal slides so that I could do a deep dive into real code, but I still went a little too long. The slides look great on my own PC, and in fact they're mostly some I stole straight from other LINQ presentions. But the overhead I was using made the text nearly unreadable for some reason, which made me take longer on the slides. It also made some of the standard VS color syntax unreadable, with the work-around being to select that code. I small the same problem with another speaker in the same room, so I guess it was the projector, but very frustrating. In the end I still got to hopefully show a fair amount of LINQ to SQL, but I had really hoped to show more. I also made sure I gave a glimpse at SqlMetal and LINQ to Entities, but both of those were meant to be just glimpses. Finally, I briefly demoed my new "real" example application written with LINQ to SQL which is included in my download. This example shows off my own POCO objects with an external XML Mapping file, instead of the ugly code gen with attributes. Its also a "real" app that consumes the LINQ to SQL with WinForms grids, drop-down filtering, and create, update, and delete. Note that it assumes the May 2006 CTP, but I'll update it to the next one when it comes out, hopefully next month. Its also nearly identical to my existing "real" example app downloads that I have for my own ORMapper and NHibernate. 
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Breaking News: Microsoft is working on having a version of the framework that will run on the Mac! That's right -- Rory broke this story just the other day in his interview with Scott Guthrie.
First, a little bit of background, which although not secret has largely went unnoticed so far. Hopefully you've heard of WPF/E, which is a subset of WPF that runs in the brower, even Firefox and Safari. So far the first CTP is largely focused on the cool graphics capabilities and supporting media. But even in this first CTP the XAML can be programmed against on the client-side using JavaScript, even with Ajax. But its also already been discretely said that in the future WPF/E will also contain a small cross platform subset of the CLR. That will mean that we will also be able to use C# or VB on the client-side to program against WPF/E! And that will be true even in Firefox and Safari on the Mac -- and this is old news that simply hasn't been widely talked about. Mike Harsh as early as March 23, 2006 said:
So what is WPF/E? It is a cross-platform, cross-browser web technology that supports a subset of WPF XAML. WPF/E also has a friction-free install model and the download size we’re targeting is very small. WPF/E supports programmability through javascript for tight browser integration. The WPF/E package also contains a small, cross platform subset of the CLR and .NET Framework that can run C# or VB.NET code. Yes, we are bringing C# programming to the Mac.
And Joe Stegman said this just last month: To be clear, "WPF/E" is independent of the .NET Framework. In a future version, we'll support a small cross platform CLR based execution engine that will run on both Windows and Apple OS X (everything we do from a runtime perspective works on both Windows and Apple OS X). In general, our tools are dependent on Windows but with the current version of "WPF/E", you can develop using a text editor and deploy on any web server. When we support the small CLR, compiling/debugging will require Windows (and so will our designer tools) but running/deployment will still work cross platform.
And then Scott said this in the interview at the 9 minute mark: Scott: And overtime we'll also support a managed programming language, uh framework, against WPF/E as well. So in addition to using JavaScript, you'll be able to use C#, uh
Rory: You mean, even for the other?
Scott: Yeah even for the Safari and Mac.
But what Scott said in this interview with Rory went beyond the small CLR for WPF/E in the browser. Instead Scott said that they were also looking at a version of this that would run outside of the browser, even on the Mac! Listen to this interview and its pretty clear that Scott was probably not intending to announce this until Mix. Rory was also quite suprised and wondered if he needed to remove this from the video. But Scott said he could keep it and acknowledged that this was probably the first time this was publicly talked about. Rory was of course very excited to be the one to get this scoop out of Scott. :) So here's what Scott said in the interview at the 23:45 mark: Rory: Is there any possibility of eventually having a framework that runs outside the browser?
Scott: Yea, yea, that's definitely something we're looking at is, uh, kind of what we call the in-browser experience and kind of the out-of-browser experience. And so that's something we'll talk more about at mix, uh
Rory: And that stuff's secret now? Cause I don't mean to bring up something that's secret.
Scott: No, no, well that's something, uh, that we haven't talked about publicly yet. But that's certainly a scenario we're thinking about.
Rory: Do I have to get that out of the video?
Scott: No, you can keep that.
Rory: I can keep that? Is this like the first time anyone's heard it?
Scott: Probably, yeah.
Just having the ability to use our favorite .NET language and a subset of the CLR inside the browser to target an incredibly rich graphics platform like WPF/E is huge to me, but if we're not even restricted to the browser -- wow! For instance, Keith Elder already has a post on his blog where he considers some of the possibilities, and that's just one person thinking out loud. Of course right now the first CTP is still very much cool graphics and media, but this is a very strategic start. Why? Because this is focusing on what isn't easily possible any other way, and its getting the big media players involved. And if the big media players use it then you can bet that everyone will be downloading the plugin just like they do now for Flash. Most users aren't going to care about the .NET part, but once its ubiquitous, then we will also be able to take advantage of it.
So there you go -- its just a matter of time before there will be a small CLR version of the .NET framework everywhere, with your favorite .NET language of course!
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Registration for Atlanta Code Camp 2007 on January 20th is now open. Space is limited and fills up fast, so do NOT delay registering -- it's free. Thanks to Jim Wooley for putting this together this year.
I'll be presenting a session titled "Linq and O/R Mapping" that will be lots of real code and very little powerpoint. If you've seen the standard Linq sessions already, or even if not, but you've been wanting more then this is for you. I'm not going to waste any time on Linq to Objects or Xml, although those are cool in their right -- I will focus purely on Linq to Sql, and to a lesser extend Linq to Entities or Datasets. Do you want to see a real application built using Linq to Sql? That's what I plan to do, and I'll do it several ways so you can experience the possibilities. For instance, should we use SqlMetal, the GUI Designer, or do our own thing with xml mappings instead of attributes? What if you want to include some relationships, use some stored procs, and even some inheritance? We shall cover all of those possibilities and more -- you will NOT be disappointed since this will not be just another slide deck or sample series based on what's already available. In fact, I would actually challenge you to find any other "real" sample that includes all of these with xml mappings, but you won't find it since it doesn't exist. I hope you get that I'm excited about this, as these technologies have definitely matured past my initial criticisms. And even if you can't make it for some reason, I'll post at least some version of my sample app after the event is over for all to see.
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The ASPInsiders Summit began today with Scott Guthrie's overview of what's happening. Steve Smith already has a good summary of his presentation, so I won't try to repeat it. Instead, let me just say that working with .NET just keeps getting more and more exciting. Its truly amazing to see how agile some of the teams at Microsoft have become recently. We've already seen Web Application and Deployment Projects and CSS Control Adapters, and now we see Expression Web Designer, PowerShell, and VS 2005 for Data Professionals. But expect to see more very soon, like ASP.NET Ajax, Data Publishing, and VS 2005 SP1, and later on the things still in CTP, like Orcas, IronPython, WPF/E, and IIS 7.0 Server. I've already installed some things, including the final release version of .NET v3.0, but I really need to go install Expression Web, PowerShell, and VS 2005 Data Pro too. Expression Web will give you today the CSS friendly design surface that Orcas will have, and VS 2005 Data Pro will give you Schema Compare, Data Compare, Data Generator, and more. Speaking of data, the Data Publishing Tool that is coming very soon will not only generate the sql to build your database schema, but it will also finally build sql to populate it. And note that VS 2005 SP1 will not only include bug fixes (and there are more than 2200), but it will also automatically finally include Web Application Projects (no addin needed). Of course no matter how much we get today, we also are still very much wanting Orcas. I have no clue what the target release date is, but I'm guessing very late 2007 or early 2008. But it will be cool when it does come, and it will support all of v2.0, v3.0, and vNext. That means it will finally add Linq, and make AJAX built-in as opposed to being an addin, but it will also include the Expression Web Designer and JavaScript Intellisense/Debugging. I'm assuming it will also include full support for WPF/E, which is looking really cool. But don't wait until then to start getting the various pieces that are out now or soon. And that was really what I got out of Scott's talk the most -- a lot of this is available today or is coming soon. 
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