Here is a really enlightening talk from Udi Dahan about the Command Query Responsibility Segregation (CQRS) pattern.

Udi goes all the way to why the current architectures must change and what are the benefits introduced by this pattern.

Beware, it’s a long presentation (about 1h40).

Skills Matter : London .NET User Group:Command Query Respons.

À la suite de la présentation Ruby que j’ai donnée il y a quelque temps, je me suis attelé à présenter au groupe Pattern & Practices CGI Québec le framework web Ruby on Rails.

Il s’agit seulement d’une introduction, histoire de donner envie à tout le monde d’aller découvrir ce merveilleux framework qui a inspiré et continue d’inspirer bon nombre de techniques que l’on retrouve dans d’autres frameworks.

En passant, j’ai vraiment hâte à la sortie de Rails 3…

I really like to use ActiveRecord when building small apps or internal tools. It offers a lot of great features of his older brother NHibernate, without freightening everybody on your team.

I also really like the ability to generate the database schema based on the domain entities, so you don’t have to worry about SQL and DDL.
Combine that with SQLite, and you can develop on your local machine without an installed database server (like Sql Server). Makes it really easy  to setup a new development machine (checkout the code, build and run – it should works).

(more…)

There are places where we are still stuck with .net framework 2.0 – so WCF is still not available. I’m currently working on such a project.

I’m using asmx web services, and i needed to be able to export the wsdl file generated by the framework, as part of an automated build.
It turns out that it seems there’s no way to generate a wsdl file from a web application directly without a web server.

So I decided to turn to NAnt and Cassini (the web server integrated with visual studio) and came with the following target :

(more…)

You’re curious and want to try Ubuntu, but you don’t want to mess up you’re computer or deal with the hassle of installing a new operating system? The you should try Ubuntu with the latest VMWare Player.

(more…)

I’ve installed the Sharepoint Training Kit on my sharepoint training workstation (created here).

After having painfully followed the instructions, I had to spent half an hour to make it work. And it seems i’m not the only one!

I really think it’s a shame for Microsoft to release poor quality software as a training material. They need to better polish “around” the products to make them more attractive.

Anyway, dear reader, if you ever have ton install it, two quick tips:

• remember to repeat the “Configure Office Sharepoint Training” steps each time you deploy the training kit to a site – remember also to check “Create permissions” ;
• pay attention to where you deploy the site : NOT the root, and NOT a subsite… Ideally, something like http://<machine_name>/stk. Otherwise, expect weird path error throughout the application…

Really interesting presentation about a concurrency in the .Net world :

MindTouch @ Monospace: Going Concurrent & Keeping your Sanity « MindTouch Developer Blog.

I should take the time to explore the MindTouch Dream framework.

J’ai donné ce soir au groupe Pattern & Practices CGI Québec une brève introduction à ce merveilleux langage qu’est Ruby.

Cette présentation s’adresse à un public de développeur familiarisé aux langages de développement plus “traditionnels” (.Net, Java, etc.).

Les fichiers exemples sont dans le repository git suivant : http://github.com/julienblin/pres-ruby.

[Mise à jour : présentation slideshare]

Found here.

To be able to run a program as a domain user when your current workstation is not part of the domain, use the following command line:

runas /netonly /user:domain\username "{program}"

Really nice when you want to connect remotely to a Sql Server with Windows Authentication, without being part of the remote domain.

I’ve just finished to watch the Mastering Git screencast series on tekpub.com

Though I was already familiar with Git, I learned a lot through the 12 episodes. Rob Conery takes the time to explain even the inner workings of Git, or how to simply integrate it with Visual Studio.

If you are using Git, or just interested in learning more about this really good tool, I encourage you to check these screencasts out.