<P>Well, let's just go with rust. For some reason, my changes keep disappearing from the CTP. I checked tonight and the timestamp handling was wrong again. I'm sure it's nothing I'm doing wrong... <IMG src="/Portals/_default/Smileys/confuse.gif" border=0></P>
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<P>Anyway, the 2.0 CTP zip has been updated again.</P>
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<P><A href="/Downloads/tabid/125/Default.aspx">http://www.easyobjects.net/Downloads/tabid/125/Default.aspx</A></P>
Rick Strahl of West Wind Technologies (based in Maui, making Rick my personal hero) has <a href="http://west-wind.com/weblog/posts/6866.aspx">an interesting blog post</a> about open source software and the NDoc utility. I have to admit, he makes some good points about why you should charge for software, and the same issues he raises about the difficulty of maintaining and supporting free software have lately weighed heavy on my mind as well.<br><br>As you may or may not know, I and the people who contribute their time to EasyObjects can do so only nights and weekends. I personally have a full time job (most of the time) as an independent consultant. That means EO at best gets third-rate attention. As you may have guessed by now, I would like to change that. <img src="/Portals/_default/Smileys/tonguestickout.gif" border="0"><br><br>Now, you may be swearing (at me) right about now, so let me tell you up front, <b>there will still be a free version of EasyObjects 2.0</b>. I haven't decided what exactly it will look like just yet, or what functionality it will have, I'm not sure at this point. But I'm making the commitment here and now to keep at least one version free. Also, the EO 1.x libraries, including the forthcoming version 1.2, will also remain free forever.<br><br>What does all this mean for the future? Changing from free software allows me to dedicate more time to EO, including better support and more timely development. This can only lead to a better product, one that I believe can avoid becoming obsolete (or worse, dead). <br><br>I hope that everyone can make the transition with me.<br>
I uploaded a new version of the 2.0 CTP. It seems that I missed one bug fix in the VB.NET business entity template. So if you are using VB, you should download the latest zip.<br><br>Sorry for the mixup. <img src="/Portals/_default/Smileys/embarrassed.gif" border="0"><br>
Man, vacationing on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain%27s_Holiday_%28TNG_episode%29">planet Risa </a>can be exhausting. It's an awfully long trip via shuttlecraft. <img src="/Portals/_default/Smileys/bigsmile.gif" border="0"><br><br>Seriously, I must apologize for being away for so long. A combination of customer projects, a certain level of personal "burn-out", and the distractions of a very pleasant summer here in the US Midwest, have all conspired to keep me from doing any serious work on EasyObjects. But the summer is drawing to a close, a well-earned vacation helped with the burn-out, and I'm finally in a groove with my current project, so all of that means it's time to refocus my attention back to my favorite ORM.<br><br>So what's been happening with EasyObjects?<br><ul><li>The 2.0 CTP has been updated. There was a problem with timestamp handling, as well as a few bugs in the templates and dynamic query providers, so against my will I released an update. In addition, I have added a SQL 2005 dynamic query provider, because SQL 2005 handles timestamps differently than SQL 2000 (with the now non-existent TSEQUAL function). I also hard-coded the new SQL 2005 provider as the default, so if you are using SQL 2000 or Oracle, you will have to uncomment the correct provider (line 2760 in EasyObject.cs).</li><li>The 2.0 code base has come quite a ways. I have added an option to do IDENTITY inserts, and I have the configuration part worked out. All that remains is Configuration Tool support and completing the NUnit test suite before we can release.</li><li>I was hoping I wouldn't have to, but it looks like I will be doing a EO 1.2 release. There are a couple of outstanding bugs to address, and I would also like to back-port the IDENTITY insert, timestamp handling and the SQL 2005 query provider.</li></ul>The original plan was to begin selling add-on modules (for other database providers), but getting a store up and running is proving both problematic and time consuming. I still intend to do this, but there may be an interim work-around before I get the final solution in place.<br><br>I'm going to prioritize my TO DO list this weekend, and I will post here as I make progress. I promise it will be more often than the past few months!<br>