First, create the application setup described in my WCF - Establishing a sample app baseline blog entry.
We will then modify that simple application so that it's traffic will show up in Fiddler2.

Second, install and startup Fiddler.  It is probably worth watching the QuickStart video if you haven't already.
After you install and run Fiddler, and then run ConsoleApp1, you'll notice that the WCF traffic doesn't show up in Fiddler.  There are multiple ways to enable that, but we are only going to cover one simple one right now.

Third, modify the client application so that Fiddler will display it's traffic.

After this line of code in ConsoleApp1 Program.cs Main:

ServiceReference1.Service1Client oneService1Client = new ServiceReference1.Service1Client();

Add:
                oneService1Client.Endpoint.Address = new System.ServiceModel.EndpointAddress(
                    new Uri(oneService1Client.Endpoint.Address.Uri.ToString().Replace("localhost", "127.0.0.1.")),
                    oneService1Client.Endpoint.Address.Identity,
                    oneService1Client.Endpoint.Address.Headers);

This essentially pushes all the network traffic into a place where Fiddler can see it (the period after the 1 is critical, it's not a typo!).

Ctrl-F5 (Debug -> Start Without Debugging)

You should now see traffic showing up in Fiddler.

If you shut down Fiddler, the application will still work fine (but if you used "ipv4.fiddler" instead of "127.0.0.1.", you would get an exception like: [EndpointNotFoundException: There was no endpoint listening at http://ipv4.fiddler:1100/Service1.svc that could accept the message.]).

At this point, for readability/testability purposes, I would encourage you to modify the web.config for the WCF service and replace the wsHttpBinding with the basicHttpBinding.  This will make it much more clear what is going on.

If you modify the WCF web.config, you have to update the reference in the client (which will generally regenerate the client's app.config to match):

Solution Explorer
 Right Click ConsoleApp1 -> Service References -> ServiceReference1 -> Update Service Reference

(This is basically needed anytime the WCF application changes it's public interface.)

We are going to run the WCF application wizard and then create a client program that establishes basic communication with that WCF Service.

We will be using Visual Studio 2008 with Service Pack 1

File -> New -> Project
 Visual C# -> Web -> WCF Service Application
  WcfApp1 -> OK
Solution Explorer
 Right Click Solution -> Add -> New Project
  Visual C# -> Windows -> Console Application
   ConsoleApp1 -> OK

Solution Explorer
 Right Click ConsoleApp1 -> References -> Add Service Reference...
  Discover
  OK

If adding the service reference fails, try to run WcfApp1 (Debug -> Start Without Debugging) and click on "Service1.svc" first.  For whatever reason, the WCF service doesn't always "auto-start" when it should.  I end up using this "workaround" quite often.

Add the following to the Main method in Program.cs in ConsoleApp1:

            try
            {
                ServiceReference1.Service1Client oneService1Client = new ServiceReference1.Service1Client();
                string serviceOutput = oneService1Client.GetData(-1);
                Console.WriteLine("serviceOutput=[" + serviceOutput + "]");
            }
            catch (Exception oneException)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("oneException=[" + oneException.ToString() + "]");
                Environment.Exit(-1);
            }

Solution Explorer
 Right Click ConsoleApp1 -> Set as StartUp Project

Ctrl-F5 (Debug -> Start Without Debugging)

Program output should be:

--
serviceOutput=[You entered: -1]
Press any key to continue . . .
--

We now have a basic WCF application with a basic client that calls it.

One very helpful tip once the basics are running is to get Fiddler up and running to be able to watch WCF traffic in case things go downhill after you make some changes.

Click here for instructions on how to do that.

There are a number of very significant drawbacks in the O/R Designer that have no reasonable work around.

• The Visual Studio 2008 LinqToSql O/R Designer is fine for a database with ~5 tables, no views, no stored procedures, and no functions, but it doesn't scale well much beyond that.
  • If the database changes, it's very difficult to manually update the O/R Designer properly.  As database complexity increases, this becomes near impossible.
  • When you need to remove an existing object from the O/R Designer to force it to update, it can be difficult to find that object.
• It is overly difficult to diff the generated files from one version to another since the files are rewritten in a different order than they were read in when changes are made.  Even if the files can be sorted in a reasonable way, diffing the files is still not an effective solution for managing changes.
• There are bugs with how the O/R Designer generates code.  In general, it is difficult to evaluate if the O/R Designer is working properly since it is difficult to diff the generated files before and after generation.  There are cases where the O/R Designer output is different than the SQL Metal output and in some of those cases, it could be a bug in either or both of the tools.
• If two or more developers are working under an edit/merge/commit style of source control, it is difficult to resolve conflicts in the LinqToSql O/R Designer files during the merge phase.
• It is not effective to try to diff O/R Designer generated files against files generated by SQL Metal as they don't use the same underlying code generation techniques and file sorting.  The two tools also have meaningfully different feature sets which negatively impacts the ability to diff the underlying files.

Once you start down the path of the O/R Designer, it gets increasingly harder to migrate away from it the farther you go.  This is a significant hidden risk as many of the scalability issues with the tool don’t present themselves right away.

It's not clear if any of these problems will be addressed in Visual Studio 2010.

This is not to say that the O/R Designer doesn't have very interesting and useful features.  It does have interesting and useful features.  They just aren't packaged in a way to make them at all usable for anything but very tiny databases.

Are there alternative LinqToSql code generation tools?

The main alternative tool is SQL Metal, which has quite a few drawbacks of its own.  While SQL Metal can scale up to much larger databases than the O/R Designer, it still can't scale effectively past a certain point.

Another free alternative is Damien Guard's LinqToSQL T4 Template.  Since the T4 template is not an official product of Microsoft and was built by a developer in their spare time, you'll have to judge for yourself whether it meets your criteria for "production worthy".

I may write a future blog entry with additional details on SQL Metal and the T4 templates.

There are non-free alternatives to the O/R Designer as well, but in many cases it is just not possible to get software tool purchases approved as part of the software development project budget.  It would be surprising if LinqToSql adoption hinged on the success of commercial third party tools.

Updated 2009/09/16 - Related blog posts:

The drawbacks of adopting Linq To Sql
.NET and ORM - Decisions, decisions

LinqToSql does offer benefits to corporate IT organizations.  Microsoft marketing has helped spread that message.

It's less clear what the drawbacks of Linq To Sql are, yet I believe the drawbacks are important to consider before adopting such a large disruptive change into a software development environment.

Here are some of the downsides to LinqToSql that I have identified so far:

• There is a significant learning curve.  The technology is deceptively approachable.  On the surface, for instance, LinqToSql takes a SQL Server database table and generates .NET source code for a .NET CLR class.  This appears to be a nice abstraction.  However, there is a significant amount of complexity involved.  The abstraction leaks.  Something doesn't work as you expect, so you start searching and reading and the reading seems to go on a lot longer than expected.  We are still early enough in the adoption cycle that many common issues and questions are under documented.
• There is immature documentation.  As technologies mature, the documentation improves.  This is especially true of the documentation of more obscure issues available through things like google searches.  Right now, there are "gotchas" that remain hard to find clear discussion around.
• There is a requirement for "seasoned" developers on the team.  The development team needs one or more developers who can learn new things quickly, handle significant amounts of complexity, and do the right thing without micromanagement.  These developers likely need significant SQL Server, ADO.NET, and object relational mapping expertise.  There is a limited quantity of these seasoned developers to go around.
• There is significant competition.  There are a lot of players in the object relational mapping (ORM) world.  LinqToSql, other than being included free in Visual Studio, arguably doesn't add enough value (yet) to the space.  Many of the highest traffic parts of LinqToSql can be (and have been extensively) emulated with ADO.NET.
• There is a significant amount of FUD and confusion around the future roadmap (i.e. version 2 and beyond) for Linq To Sql.  Microsoft is actively de-emphasizing Linq To Sql while maintaining that they will continue to support it for the foreseeable future.  While the Entity Framework may some day be a clear and straight-forward migration path for current Linq To Sql users, that is not the case today and Microsoft is having trouble with damage control around their confusing and mixed messages.  I wish I could link to something worth reading on this topic, but as I've said, Microsoft has really botched the communication on this issue.
• There are significant bugs.  That is a normal course of business with anything that is basically on version 1 (and since VS 2008 SP1 has been released, LinqToSql could possibly be called version 2).  Here's an example of a bug that is likely to hit a decent portion of the LinqToSql user base.
• There are significant tooling issues.  The O/R Designer and SQLMetal tools that come with VS 2008 are fairly blunt objects with fairly significant limitations.  While some commercial products have stepped in to fill some of the gaps, there are very limited free options available.  I hope to write a future blog entry with more details on the limitations in the VS 2008 LinqToSql tools (for one, see Do not use the Visual Studio 2008 LinqToSql O/R Designer).

LinqToSql will appeal to many people for many reasons and I think its momentum is likely unstoppable.

As with adopting any new technology, it's important to go in with your eyes open. 

Your mileage may vary.

Update 2009/09/16 - Here is a somewhat related follow-up blog post discussing where Linq2Sql matches up against other .NET ORMs: .NET and ORM - Decisions, decisions

Here's a fairly nasty error message with a (sometimes) pretty subtle solution.  Let's say you want to insert a null value into a nullable database column with ADO.NET using parameterized SQL.  The insert statement could look something like this:

INSERT INTO TableName (ColumnName) VALUES (@NullableValue)

Let's say I setup my SqlParameter array as follows:

SqlParameter[] sqlParameterArray = new SqlParameter[1];
SqlParameter oneSqlParameter = new SqlParameter("@NullableValue", SqlDbType.Int);
oneSqlParameter.Value = null; // I want to insert the value null

If I ran the insert using the SqlCommand.ExecuteNonQuery method, I would get this exception:

--
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException

Prepared statement '(@NullableValue int)INSERT INTO TableName (ColumnName) VALUES (@' expects parameter @NullableValue, which was not supplied.
--

What's wrong?  Apparently, "null" is not a valid value for the Value of a SqlParameter.  You need to do this instead:

oneSqlParameter.Value = DBNull.Value;

Is that error message helpful?  I don't think so.

There are plenty of other reasons why that exception could be thrown, but I've been using ADO.NET for a while and I still stumbled upon this particular under documented problem recently.  Very, very subtle.  Crystal clear error messages from software are so important, yet so uncommon in the real world.

More and more software products are including a feature that allows using the Lua programming language to author addons that add additional features to the base software product.

One of the most notable of those products is World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft players can write Lua addons to modify and enhance the user interface in many useful ways.

As a player of World of Warcraft for three years, I've enjoyed using many of these addons and even started to create my own.

The addon I developed seemed useful enough that I thought other players may be willing to purchase the addon for real money, even though the large majority of World of Warcraft addons at the time were free.

Long story short, the company that created World of Warcraft turned on their addon developers and effectively outlawed addon developers from making a living from addon development.

In the process of trying to commercialize my lua addon, I wrote a code obfuscator for lua.  That obfuscator doesn't have much use to me at the moment, so I put a web front end on it and I'm publishing it to see if other people can get any meaningful use out of it.

This version (v1.0.0.4) is free to use with limitations on how many text characters can be processed per day and per IP Address.

Click here to: Obfuscate Lua

There is a feedback page as part of the lua obfuscator application that allows you to submit feedback of any kind.  Please let me know what you think!

If you launch an xbap file from the file system (i.e. Windows Explorer), the xbap web application will get cached in the ClickOnce cache (as opposed to launching the application from Visual Studio, which does not affect the ClickOnce cache).  You will always get that version of the application from then on no matter how you try to change or rebuild it in Visual Studio.  There are two workarounds:

1) Run "mage -cc" to clear the ClickOnce cache (this affects the entire ClickOnce Cache, not just this one xbap file).
2) Use the publish wizard in Visual Studio, which increments the version number of the xbap file, which causes ClickOnce to separately cache that version.

(This information is relevant to Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 / .NET 3.5 SP1.)

Quick background: I used to hate Microsoft and love Linux.  Now, and for the last 9+ years, I have made a living almost exclusively as a software developer on the Microsoft development platform.

Every now and then, I check back in with the non-.NET world to see how things are progressing. (I actually have a decent amount of first hand experience with Java and Perl.  I don't really have first hand experience with Ruby or Python or many of the other flavors currently getting a lot of press.)

There is still a lot of ignorance, which exists everywhere.  There is a lot of Microsoft hate and Sun hate and even some Ruby on Rails hate.

Here's the thing:

If you are given a set of well written business requirements, and you are a competent developer on the relevant platform, you can bang out a relatively easily maintained solution on various technology platforms without much problem.

However, if you are on a team of incompetent people, you will likely fail regardless of the technology platform.

If the business requirements are not written well, you will likely fail regardless of the technology platform.

So, the question in my mind is: how much of an obstacle to project success is the technology platform compared to the people and the requirements?  I think the answer is "not much".

So, why is so much time wasted with the angst and religious discussions about technology platforms?  I would rather see developers do the following with their time:

1) choose jobs with good people
2) learn to hire good people
3) learn how the business (of your customers) works so you aren't so dependent on requirements written (almost exclusively) by people who don't understand the technology platform being used to implement the solution

In my humble opinion, developers spend way too much time debating things (like technology platforms) that have minimal impact on project success.

I guess it should go without saying, but moving toward project success is pretty high on the list of goals for almost anyone, anywhere.  The technology platform of choice has very little impact on project success.

So, how did I choose a technology platform for me personally?  I made a bet.  I gambled.  I guessed that expertise in .NET would translate best into an income stream.  In the end, I may be horribly wrong, but so far it's working out okay for me.  As long as I/you can feed my/your family, any technology platform of choice is good enough.

I did not attend the Business of Software 2008 Conference this year, but I spent some time tracking down write-ups done by people who did.

There is a Business of Software 2008 Wiki with some notes (and hopefully more to come?).

Cary Millsap wrote up some notes.

Steve Jones wrote up some notes (and there may be more still coming).

Cliff McCollum wrote up some notes (and it appears there is more coming).  I just linked to his business tag, so that link will not necessarily be as useful a month or so from now.

That's what I was able to find in a few minutes of googling.  There is probably more out there.

I came close to going this year, but cost and timing weren't great for me.  I'll probably consider attending this conference next year.

TheLadders.com is a job website for $100k+ jobs:

http://www.theladders.com/

They apparently don't understand how to store multiple versions of a resume in a database though.  You can have one resume that you either type by hand or upload (and they will parse it... poorly).  If you hand edit the resume either before or after uploading, it gets stored.  However, if for some reason you upload the resume again for any reason, all the hand editing (except the Professional Overview section) is lost.

I chose not to upload my resume as I didn't want to waste a lot of time fixing whatever mess their parser made.  I spent hours hand editing my resume into their custom user interface, which is honestly not too great.  When recruiters see your resume, it's actually generated from the data in their database into a Microsoft Word document that looks semi-horrible (my two page resume became four pages with major white space and formatting issues).

I then went to submit my resume for their "free resume critique" (assuming you are a paying customer, which you pretty much have to be to get any value from the website).  If offered me the option of using what I hand edited or uploading a Microsoft Word document.  I thought my two page, nicely formatted resume would do better in a resume critique then their ugly four page thing, so I uploaded a Word version.  It did not take long to figure out what I stated above: that upload deleted all the data I hand entered and replaced it with their parsed garbage.  Multiple hours of work lost because I was tricked into believing that they might have a clue on how important it is to treat user entered data with high regard and not delete it without the user's knowledge.

So, I clicked their "Live Chat" button to talk to a support representative where I learned that the only thing they could restore was the Professional Overview section.  The support person was pleasant, but evasive: she appears to have had this conversation multiple times before.  I was not pleased.  She offered two additional weeks on my monthly subscription.  I said I honestly wasn't getting much, if any, value from TheLadders and said I'd rather cancel my subscription and get a refund, which she did without a hiccup.

I've been using web applications for a long time and I honestly can't remember having a website delete my data without asking me first, yet now it's happened to me twice in one day by two websites that should have known better.  Users beware.