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.NET grows some grass-roots MVC frameworks: FubuMVC, OpenRasta and Bistro

When I first saw web applications from Microsoft, even the pre-.NET Active Server Page model, I always thought to myself: Where are the Model-View-Controller(MVC) frameworks ?!? . MVC frameworks can give a web application a fair amount of structure, in addition to helping manage and coordinate its actions.

In contrast, when I first learned about Java web applications -- which was some years before Microsoft even got into this market -- right along with its core parts made up of Java Server Pages(JSPs) and Servlets, I learned about MVC frameworks. Initially there were few, but quickly there were more than a dozen to choose from (Struts, Stripes, SpringMVC, Tapestry, Wicket and the list goes on). Needles to say most web development done in other languages like Ruby and Python is also based on frameworks that have MVC out-of-the-box (e.g. Rails and Django).

Now the .NET ecosystem seems to have caught on with several grass-roots .NET frameworks. By grass-roots I mean they're not Microsoft sponsored, but rather emerged from the .NET community as a necessity. Much like Java MVC frameworks grew without direct sponsorship from Sun/Oracle.

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September 22, 2010 | Permalink | Track Back (0)

Windows Azure Dallas - Tapping data in the cloud

A long-long time ago -- Internet time that is or the equivalent of 2 years -- there was a lot of hoopla surrounding the term Mashup . Which is nothing more than an application made up from several data sources available on the web.

The possibilities seemed endless and so came a long series of services. Microsoft unveiled tools like Popfly , soon came the Enterprise Mashup Markup Language , the Open Mashup Alliance and even I got into the foray with Mashup Soft .

The fever has since died down in the Mashup world and what hasn't been canceled or is in a dormant state, is getting little attention. But don't get me wrong, the idea behind Mashups is stilll a brilliant one, creating applications that deliver greater insight by mashing-up data from maps, an organization's sales department, government data related to housing or crime, global weather data, among many other things. This is why the possibilities for Mashups seemed endless, because if there was one abundant thing on the web it was data.

However, I can tell you from first hand experience what's the most difficult part to building an application of this kind: quality data sources. This aspect appears to soon be getting an important push forward with Microsoft's Azure - Dallas project .

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September 21, 2010 | Permalink | Track Back (0)

.NET gets a new view engine: Razor

Once you've processed all the data you want to display from an end user or database, you rely on a view engine to structure it. Though most view engines -- even across programming languages and web frameworks -- share certain attributes, there are often distinctive characteristics that make one view engine more appealing over another for designers/developers.

.NET will soon be getting a new view engine. Still code-named Razor, it will bring a series of syntax and features-sets changes that will put it head-to-head against the other .NET view engines: The classic ASPX, NHaml and Spark.

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September 17, 2010 | Permalink | Track Back (0)

Versioning and .NET's run-time

For those using .NET the title is probably not news, since this has been available since .NET 1.0. This is simply a follow-up to the last post ' OSGi: Versioning and Java's run-time '. Yes .NET got this functionality in its first version, Java is 7 versions in and its still not clear when support for this will materilize. The mechanism is strikingly similar though, this post will illustrate how.

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February 18, 2009 | Permalink | Track Back (0)

SOA and Microsoft Oslo

Just when you thought new acronyms were a thing of the past in the SOA world, Microsoft just unveiled its latest undertaking code-named 'Oslo'. Its not a product by itself, but rather a holistic approach to all the numerous parts that will eventually compose the Service Orientated Architecture vision from a Microsoft stand-point.

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November 7, 2007 | Permalink | Track Back (0)

Silverlight : Introducing XAML on the browser and one more piece to the WinFX puzzle.

The frenzy came in Mix 07 -- the biggest event for Microsoft developers -- its name Silverlight : A RIA-new generation-Flash killer-all things video-uber browser technology, but does Silverlight really offer something new under the hood ? From what I have read so far, I believe it does, and it comes in the form of XAML support for the browser and filling in a piece of the WinFX puzzle.

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May 12, 2007 | Permalink | Track Back (0)

Java and .NET interoperability without web services : JMS, MSMQ, CORBA, JNI and DLL's

While web services continue to gather momentum for achieving interoperability across platforms , they can still be tricky to implement or difficult to get buy-in from the 'bigwigs' at many companies that may consider them the new IT toy.

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April 4, 2007 | Permalink | Track Back (0)

Windows Power Shell - for the Unix in you.

If your in the software industry, there is no question that you've performed some type of sysadmin task at least once in your career or still do it on a regular basis, those irksome commands to create, delete, move, compress and update everything from regular files to applications. Well, if you come from the Windows world things are about to get better in this area with : Windows Power Shell .

Continue reading : "Windows Power Shell - for the Unix in you."

August 9, 2006 | Permalink | Track Back (0)

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