CODE Magazine - Article: From Zero to Business Application in 15 Minutes

CODE Magazine - Article: From Zero to Business Application in 15 Minutes: "For Customer, I will add a computed field for the summary property called FullName by clicking on the “Computed Property” button at the top of the designer. This sets the Is Computed property in the properties window for you and an “Edit Method” link appears. This method is where you return the value of the computed field. Computed fields are not stored in the underlying database; they are computed on the entity and only live in the data model. For FullName, I will return “LastName, FirstName”.

Public Class Customer

Private Sub FullName_Compute(
ByRef result As String)

' Set result to the desired field value
result = Me.LastName + ', ' + Me.FirstName
End Sub
End Class"

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This really bugs me. It's from a article about Microsoft's new LightSwitch tool. The problem is a SUB returning a value. That is the very definition of a FUNCTION.

This supposed to make life easier and allow you to get apps up and running fast. It also appears they have a new data type called string that will be stored in SQL Server. So presumably it will it end up as Varchar or Char data type. They will have to prove that this abstraction will not result in problems in the real world.

Google releases native client sdk- The Inquirer

The web and the desktop are getting married:

Google releases native client sdk- The Inquirer

RDBMS | Database Service | PAAS | Microsoft SQL Azure Database

Strange, I've been using SQL server over the web for years. Why has this been such a secret?

RDBMS | Database Service | PAAS | Microsoft SQL Azure Database

RDBMS | Database Service | PAAS | Microsoft SQL Azure Database

Google Wave – Ahead of its Time or Just Another Failure? - Web Land

Google Wave – Ahead of its Time or Just Another Failure? - Web Land

While I found Wave to be very exciting and useful, a couple of my developer friends were less impressed which surprised me. Wave solved the problem of "email threads" whereby people carry on long ongoing conversations that can be very complex to follow especially when they include several of the previous comments in their reply.

Facebook is fun, but Google is providing a new platform for business productivity embedded in a social meeting space. Apps are slowly working their way into more and more of what I do online. While they are not as powerful as Microsoft Office, for a great many situations they are all that people really need to get the job done. Google Apps provide basic functionality combined with online storage and easy collaboration. It's a combination that is hard to beat especially for free.

Akron/Canton web meetup

Tonight I attended a meetup of the Akron/Canton web meetup group.  We covered current trends and voted on setting up some labs to learn new tools.  Mobil devices are hot but development is a challenge to say the least.  It seem unlikely that any standards will win acceptance with the hyper-competitive state of the mobile market. But that makes a group like this all the more useful, you can exchange horror (and success) stories and hopefully gain some perspective.  I'm looking forward to attending more meetings.

High Bridge Glens.avi

Here is a video of the ice at the High Bridge Glens in Cuyahoga Falls:

Web Components with Google Gadgets

The web is build for the distribution information and code.  Web components and specifically Google Gadgets allow anyone to invent a nifty widget and then share it with the world.

Well anyone who is willing to write some HTML and Javascript at least.  Google even supplies a simple  small Gadget to allow you to develop tools called Google Gadget Editor.  It is essentially just a text box that allows you to post and preview your applet right inside your iGoogle page.  The key to success is to go slow and test frequently.

Recently I designed a Google web form to track the time spent on my current projects  and it was very fast and easy to set up. But when it was done it had something missing that my Access desktop application has had for years, and that something is a stopwatch utility that counts minutes and hours.  The best part of this is the the pause button that lets me stop the counter during  phone calls or any  other distraction and then pick up right where I left off.  There were several of these gadgets already posted but none of them did exactly what I wanted.  The result is my own offering which is currently functional if not very polished as far as the UI.
With a little more work I hope to have something that is more attractive and  ready to offer to the online community.