There was a problem with the Data Builder 4.1 included in the setup of the Build 16 for 4.1 – it wasn’t the correct binary…  This is what happens when things get rushed.  Normally a full change of a build number takes about 12 hours of testing to recertify.  But because people had grabbed the 15 test setup we had to bump the version and didn’t get a chance to fully retest it – just no time.

Data Builder Only

So those with binaries for 4.1 can download the 4.1 Data Builder Build 17.  It is just a ZIP file with the correct Data Builder, and to avoid confusion I bumped it’s number to Build 17.  It was the one that was supposed to be included.  I am not going to redo an entire setup for that one file.  It would require days of testing, or the possibility of introducing yet another subtle error.  So just unzip the exe into your install directory and overwrite the 4.1 Build 16 included.

Ok, hopefully this blog post will explain the most common upgrade paths for all existing VistaDB 3.x and 4.0 customers.  There are a lot of edge cases around people who bought something from a reseller and then upgraded to another thing, only to downgrade later, etc.  I am sure there are a few that I missed.  It is not a conspiracy or a plot against you, just an edge case.

How to purchase upgrades

Login to your account

Click the Upgrades link to see available upgrades and discounts.

Upgrades SKUs

There are a few SKUs around the upgrade path.  There is only one new SKU for purchase. 

New Purchases

The VistaDB 4.1 Binary/Source/Addons version, and yes the price is $1,499. 

The SKU includes the binary version of 4.1, 4.1 engine source code, ASP.Net membership pak, Data Migration Wizard Pak, and the DBA Sample Tool Pak.  That is an $8,500 value.

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Ok, VistaDB 4.1 has been released as Build 16.  We had posted a Build 15 last night for testing, but it was never intended to go live.  So we had to bump the build number today to the final build number of 16.

There are a number of changes to this release, this post is about release notes.  Upgrade paths will be in a separate post (in general login to your account and look at the Upgrades panel to see what your options are).

Release Notes

License system has been removed from the current codebase.  There is no need for licenses.licx files.  But the assembly has been bumped to 4.1 as a result of the change in the interfaces, you must rebind your application in most cases to use 4.1.

The .Net Provider name now reads "VistaDB 4 ADO.NET Provider for .Net".  This is to cover all VistaDB 4.x versions.  The binding is now 4.1.0.0, so make sure you update any provider factory versions in your applications.

Provider Name Change

The VistaDB Provider was named VistaDB.NET20 to indicate it was the .Net 2 version of the provider (back when we had a .Net 1.1 version).  But to better match the framework we have now changed it to System.Data.VistaDB. 

If you have strongly typed datasets you need to edit the xml using a text editor (the wizards do not allow this) to change the name in the Connections section from VistaDB.NET20 to System.Data.VistaDB.

Visual Studio 2010

Entire product is now built in Visual Studio 2010.  We still produce .Net 2 assemblies, but we are using VS 2010 as our main development IDE.

Obfuscation Change

We are no longer using the Obfuscation engine.  There were problems using the assembly under Mono, and with sporadic bugs in the product we could not get addressed by the vendor.  The obfuscation is no longer enabled by default.  We may use another one at some point in the future to compact the assembly, but for now it is full size.   This means slightly larger DLL and more RAM usage due to the namespaces.

Data Builder Changes

Data Builder is built against .Net 3.5 SP1 now because we have added LINQ query ability to the main form.  We have also removed the pulling of the RSS feed onto the main window (trying to remove all external dependencies in the code).

The load screen has changed to a list of the most recently used databases (double click to choose one).  You can change the number of recent item from the Tools | Options dialog.

LINQ Queries

There is a new item in the database tree view named LINQ.  These are for writing dynamic EF queries against your database.  Once you click the LINQ item you will see a new panel that shows a query partially constructed for you.  You must hit the Generate Model to build an EF model out of the current database.  Then you can write LINQ queries against it and run them in Data Builder. 

The idea here is to allow for rapid writing of LINQ queries against a database for quick tests.  You can write them in Visual Studio (to get intellisense) and then paste them in here as long as you name your data context object "context".

There is no intellisense support, but the resulting code can pretty much be copied and pasted into your C# code (there is no VB support, sorry).  The queries must be written against the temporary data context object named context.  If you use some other naming in your code then you must obviously update the name once you paste it into your code.

SQL Script Export

A lightweight SQL Script Export has been added to Data Builder to output schema to a SQL file.  It does not handle data, or stored procs, or anything else.  Just schema for the entire database.  It is not for use as an API, it is only for use internal to Data Builder.

Customer Experience Removed

The CEIP program has been removed.  It may be added back at a future date, but I wanted to make sure everything that talks externally is out of this version just in case.

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There is a new pane in the Data Builder for VistaDB 4.1.  The LINQ query pane is a very handy way to build and test LINQ queries against a simple Entity Framework model.  First understand that this pane is a work in progress.  It was designed to be an easy way to write LINQ queries (similar to LINQPad) for your VistaDB database.  The feature is of limited usefulness since the model cannot be customized at generation, or loaded from your own assembly.  But this is where we were with the feature when we had to ship, so here it is.  We have been using it a lot to help write LINQ queries, we hope you find it useful too.

The current implementation only supports C# (sorry VB guys, it was on the list).  You can right click on the Entity Model tree and Script the main query window with all your basic CRUD operations.

By default the dialog is grayed out until you generate a model.  The code shown will still be present once the model is generated.

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For anyone coming from a background using T-Sql as their primary query language, Linq to Entities can be quite daunting. I, for one, am a huge fan of the Entity Framework.  I consider it another step towards keeping data driven application developers inside the .Net framework. And LINQ is a perfect way for programmers to think about data queries.  Sql is another language for most developers to learn, and each database has slightly different syntax for operations.  LINQ and Entity Framework make it much easier for programmers to think in their native programming language while writing queries.

In this article I am going to be showcasing a few common Sql query patterns, and explaining their Linq to Entities (EF) equivalents.  This will hopefully show some of the power of LINQ to developers who have yet to start learning the LINQ syntax.

Single Column T-Sql query

First we are going to take a look at a simple T-Sql query that selects one column from a table named Employees. This query is used in a DataAdapter to fill a DataTable then bound to a WinForms GridView.

select Age from employees

The column “Age” is of type Int, so the query will return a list of all Age’s(int’s) from the employees table. This simple query can be edited in several ways to return different results to the naming of the Age context.

select AGE from employees
select employees.Age as NewAge from employees

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Yes, VistaDB 4.1 is nearing release.  VistaDB 4.1 will be released before the end of the month.  For the most part this is a drop in replacement of 4.0 for everyone, but the License system has been totally removed. 

There are enhancements in the release though, take a look at the Dynamic Entity Framework model generation capability for Data Builder.  It is a really cool feature for writing LINQ queries within Data Builder.

Source or Binary

Yes, there will be a source release for 4.1 (free to those who have recently purchased the 4.0 Source), and a binary version as an upgrade to current users of 4.0. 

The upgrade price will be 60% off the list, as a minor upgrade fee.  Those who have 3.x can upgrade as well, but the discount is less since they are not running the most recent version.

This license is effectively a $5,000 site license for every user.  Since I seriously doubt anyone will be coming back to buy more licenses after they have an unlocked version. 

License System

The entire licenses.licx system has been removed, and the installer is being modified to not require the Activation Server in order to run.  This is an unlocked dll runtime. 

Subscribers

There are very few subscribers.  If you have a current subscription, then yes this is included for free (honestly, when have I not done that?).

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This is a summary of the email to all VistaDB 4 users.

Hard decisions have to be made

This is a very painful note for me to write. I have poured literally everything I had into VistaDB; time, energy, and money. But there are some realities that I have to face up to. If you cannot charge what it costs you to build something, then you shouldn’t be building it.

Our costs as a business have climbed quite rapidly, but income has gone down. In the past three years the following have happened: Health Insurance for employees is up 500%, corporate taxes are up 22% due to new laws in the US, unemployment insurance is 160% higher now, credit card merchant fees are double; and have much higher rates for international sales, business insurance is now totally out of our reach, server hosting is almost double, the list goes on and on. How much more are we making? Actually, I am making less today than three years ago.

Closing the Company

I cannot afford to work on VistaDB full time anymore, and I am in negotiations with a third party to acquire the product.

The office will be closing August 1, 2010.

Not the product or website yet, but read on for more details.

There are several different scenarios that may play out as a part of this, and I want to try to explain them. I had hoped some of the options listed below would have already completed their cycle by now, but they are taking much longer in negotiations than I originally expected. 

Option – VistaDB Acquired

If this third party acquires VistaDB then anything could happen. They could pull it from the market, and make it an internal tool. They could change the license to be based upon royalties. They could drastically change anything they want, it would be their product. I hope this happens, only because it would mean more resources into the product as a whole.

I am seriously considering an offer from this company to go work for them full time. While I would not be working on VistaDB full time, I may still retain some measure of influence on the product direction as an advisor.  The company seems quite sincere in their offer, but the devil is always in the details.

Option - No One Acquires VistaDB

If I can’t come to terms with anyone, then I may hold on to VistaDB, but it will be relegated to a nights and weekends type of activity. There will be no more full time work on VistaDB from me.  There will be little maintenance on the current product, as I am planning to spend my free time on a more advanced engine. Items that don’t interest me, or are too expensive to support will be dropped like a hot rock (Medium Trust for example). I still have a ton of ideas for the engine, and know I could improve performance probably 10x over what it is today, but not without massive design changes. If this is a hobby / research project then I will make those changes. I will be no longer worried about backward compatibility, or all the crazy upgrade paths.  I actually have a complete engine designed and protyped that is actually faster than SQL CE, but without a way to make money on it there is little point in developing it as a commercial product.

If I hold on to VistaDB, I would try to keep the websites and forums up as long as I can, but the server costs are not cheap. I would probably continue to sell the product, but as a company only type of sale (including source) without official support.  There would of course be community support.

Some business friends suggested I keep the product selling as is, but outsource everything and just let it sell until I recoup my costs. That is not my style. The product is complex, and I seriously doubt anyone could provide support who is not a programmer.

Option – Terminate the Product

This could happen if no one acquires the product, and I accept full time employment somewhere that forbids me from working on things in my free time. Many companies have intellectual property and non compete clauses in employment contracts these days.   This could happen, as I am actively discussing going to work for two large companies within this industry.  Neither would probably take lightly to me continuing research on a product that could eventually compete with something they sell.

Option – Open Source the Product

No, Not really an option at all. Who would work on it? Sure lots of people love to consume open source projects, but very few people contribute to them. And I have put a LOT of money into this product, I am not going to just give it away until I can at least break even. I have to put my kids through college, hopefully reclaim part of the money I have put into the company, etc.  And lets face it donation type projects never, ever make money.  Advertising on the site, etc are all pointless wastes of time.

New User Options

I am going to be changing the SKUs to a source only license in a few days. That will give everyone a chance to buy the 4.1 product and source at a reasonable price. It will ensure you can continue to run the 4.1 product as long you want / need it. No matter what happens to VistaDB.

What about activation and Visual Studio plugins?

I am going to release VistaDB 4.1 without licensing built in. This will allow all source users to continue to install and run in the event that everything is shut down.

It will not be a free upgrade unless you own the source; there will be some fee for it. User who don’t purchase the upgrade will not have access to it.

It will not have everything in the 4.1 I had hoped to release, but because there are breaking interface changes and the license system is different (gone), I have to bump the minor version number.

There will be no Sync Provider, for example. The Sync Provider has had a ton of time poured into it, but it is not production ready (not even close).   There will be no model first in Entity Framework.  Some EF extension methods will not be implemented in the current 4.x product (Skip / Take).

We do have some other new features that did get into 4.1, but that is a different post. There are also some changes in requirements, Data Builder now requires .Net 3.5 SP1 present on the developer machine.

The VistaDB 4.1 runtime is still .Net 2.0 SP1. This will be the last release for the 4.x line in all likelihood.

My recommendation

I seriously recommend that everyone purchase the source. It is a cheap insurance policy against whatever the future may hold. Existing customers will see the source in the Upgrades section of their account.  New users can purchase the 4.1 product with the source and continue using it no matter what happens.

I will probably keep the Infinite Codex site as a personal blog (again if the company I go to will let me).

It has been a fantastic ride, but one with a lot of regrets on my part.  Ah, to look back things always look so clear. 

FAQ

What about CornerstoneDB?  CornerstoneDB.com will continue as a stand alone entity.  Matthew McDonald will take that over and run it as his own.

LINQ is fantastic for the ability to write queries that express intent much more clearly than the same SQL, or structured code.  One problem that I have run into though is handling NULL database values that are part of a group by statement. 

Grouping by ProductSKU

Grouping in LINQ allows you to return sets of data from a collection for a given key value.  The group by clause is what the key ends up being in the result set.  Lets take a grouping of the Products by the SKU.

from p in Products
    group p by p.ProductSKU

Enumerable IGrouping collection

This results from the group by are enumerable groups ( IGrouping<String, Product> ) with the String being the Key for the groups (the ProductSKU field from the table).  The typical way you walk through this result is a nested for loop.

var groups = from p in Products
    group p by p.ProductSKU;
    
foreach( var groupentry in groups )
{
    Console.WriteLine( "Group: {0}", groupentry.Key );
    
    foreach( var groupitem in groupentry )
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Product: {0}", groupitem.ProductSKU);
    }
}
    

I end up with a list that looks something like this:

Group: VDB4DBA
Product: VDB4DBA
Group: VDB4DMW
Product: VDB4DMW
Group: VDB4PARTNER
Product: VDB4PARTNER

This works, but not what I really wanted.  In this case the first four characters of the SKU are the same per product family (VDB4 for all VistaDB 4 SKUs).  I would like to be able to group by only those first four characters instead of the complete ProductSKU.  You can do this with the following code.

from p in Products
    group p by p.ProductSKU.Substring(0, 4)

What if there are NULL entries?

But what happens if there is a NULL entry in the ProductSKU?  You get a ConstraintException: The property cannot be set to a null value.

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ClickOnce applications have many benefits including ease of deployment, optional automatic updates and framework requirement checks.The only real complicated issue with ClickOnce is how to deploy the database. I can’t imagine trying to deploy Sql Server as a part of your application! VistaDB is a perfect fit to be embedded in a ClickOnce application due to the ease of XCopy deployment. Our 100% managed engine means you don’t need any permissions on the client side, no installs or registry permissions are required.  VistaDB can also deploy one dll to either a 32 or 64 it machine, there is no need to target a specific CPU type in advance of the deployment.

This article explains how to get a simple Windows Forms application (databound using Entity Framework) up and running with VistaDB and ClickOnce deployment.  There are a few manual steps, but almost all of these will apply to any client side xcopy deployable database. They obviously do not apply to SQL Server!

Databound WinForms Project

The Windows Forms project used in this example is very simple and consists of the following:

• A VistaDB 4 Database containing one table named Employees with the columns and data shown in the grid to the right.
• An ADO.NET Entity Model (EF model) of the VistaDB database, built using the Visual Studio wizards.
• One Form (shown on the right) that contains a grid and a button that populates the GridView with a simple linq query against the EF model.

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I have been studying the new PLINQ and Parallel Task Library in .Net 4 looking for various ways to do things that we can’t do in .Net 2.0.  PLINQ is huge, and there are a lot of new ways to do multi threaded programming using .Net 4.  In this article I want to cover a particular problem I have had many times over the years.  How do you speed up multithreaded apps that are bound by blocking functions, or long running I/O operations?

I started looking at this method to speed up some long running file I/O routines deep in the VistaDB engine.  Most of time we are blocked in reads from disk before we can continue working, but usually we have part of the blocks we need.  So we could start working, and then continue when the rest of the blocks are loaded.  Adding that logic is complex and prone to error with traditional threading code.  Fortunately PLINQ has a way to make some of these types of operations very simple. 

Reading multiple websites

For this example I am going to read the first page of 8 websites and then act on that information afterwards.  This is the type of very simple parallel operation that splits up really well.  But these types of long running reads are very similar to what happens in many applications.

Side Note on C# 4.0 In a Nutsell Book

I actually adopted this example from one given in Joseph Albahari’s book C# 4.0 In a Nutshell (he is also the author of the excellent LinqPAD).  Weighing in a 1000 pages is not exactly a Nutshell, but it is a fantastic book for developers who already know C# and just want to go through C# and CLR 4.  The concepts in the book cover older versions of .Net as well, but the juicy parts for me were all the new changes.

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