Will Beattie's Blog

  Recently I wrote about how some of the Serialization problems you can face when dealing with long running workflows. In this post I’m going to cover how I deal with logic changes in persisted workflows and also how you can make logic changes to your workflows without having to deploy code. Hosting the Workflow When it comes to hosting your workflows there are really only two options to consider. Self-Hosting WCF Workflow Service To be honest I only looked at the WCF Workflow Service model briefly and decided it wasn’t the best fit for the requirements as it couldn’t provide the same benefits of self-hosting within a Workflow Application . Workflow Instance Store In order to persist Workflow instances you need to first create the Workflow Instance Store database. For this you will need to use the following scripts: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\SQL\en\SqlWorkflowInstanceStoreSchema.sql C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\SQL\en\Sq...

  UPDATED ON: 16/09/2010 If you’re using Entity Framework chances are you’ve come up against performance issues already, especially when instantiating your Object Context. One very reliable way to increase performance is to pre-generate the Views. Depending on the size of your model and in my experience it can shave as much as 40% off the instantiation time. There is a good overview on MSDN , however it only covers .NET 3.5. Step 1 Go to your Model properties and select “ Copy to Output Directory ” for the Metadata Artifact Processing option. The result of this is you will end up with the .ssdl, .csdl and .msl files in your output directory which in this case is bin/Debug. Step 2 Next you need to setup the Pre-build event to use the EDMGen.exe tool. NB: If you use the Command on the MSDN site you will come across this error. “The required parameter ‘mode’ is missing” The correct command to use is: "%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\ v4.0....

I just received this very cryptic error when running a Unit Test in Visual Studio 2010 Beta devenv.exe – No Disk There is no disk in the drive. Please insert a disk into drive \Device\Harddisk3\DR3 The only resolution was to restart Visual Studio. Has anyone else seen this?

Keith Patton has started a CodePlex project called KandaAlpha which I will be contributing to. Original post here The aim of the project is get our feet wet with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 and in particular the POCO capabilities of Entity Framework. It's also going to try and demonstrate best practice Domain Driven Design and other associated patterns. db4o has been selected as the persistancy database of choice as it presents a very interesting alternative to the standard RDBMS.

The beauty of working for a small dynamic company is that we aren't restricted by corporate policies and can make changes as and when it makes sense. Recently a colleague of mine came into the office raving about Windows 7 Release Candidate . My ears pricked up at this and it certainly tickled my underlying desire for shiny new toys, however it got put on the backburner. It wasn't until I heard Visual Studio 2010 Beta was going to be released that I decided to make the shift. The prospect of having Code Contracts was just far too compelling. Fortunately we have a spare PC at the office with the following specs. 500 GB 2.66 GHZ Quadcore 3.25 GB Ram Our dev environment requirements are Sql Server 2008 Developer Edition SP1 Visual Studio 2010 ReSharper Dynamsoft Hosted Anywhere Client So I decided it was time for an upgrade and I agreed that if we could get a stable version of our development environment then we could all upgrade. Here are some install timings. Windo...