Home > SSW Standards > Better Software Suggestions > SSW Microsoft ASP.NET Dynamic Data Suggestions
Do you agree with them all? Are we missing some?
Let us know what you think.
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Don't use command prompt for generating pages.
BLINQ uses command prompt to generate web page, which could potentially cause problems
such as typo issues or quoting issues. Running other applications with an intuitive
UI or a web page is usually a much better way to generate code rather than using
the command prompt.
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Figure: BLINQ uses command prompt to generate maintenance pages
Can you have a web page with a button and a few check boxes for the options?
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Figure: SSW validate page has buttons to generate reports for validating sql server,
web server, network and components
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Please have search page for updating a specific record.
In the BLINQ pages you can use navigation link at the bottom of the grid to be able
to edit a record. It is ok to edit or update records if the tables don't have big
amount of data. However, when you want to update recent records in a table which
contains tens of thousands of record, you have to keep clicking the navigation links
thousands times. The one of the best way to find the record to update is using the
basic search or filter.
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- Figure: BLINQ doesn't have search functionality
Search makes it easy to narrow down the results and it is essential feature in maintenance
web site and that feature is missing in BLINQ.
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- Figure: SSW TimePROOnline search for who needs follow
up
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Please add references by default.
After installation of BLINQ and generation of web pages, you'll have lots of compile
errors. That's because you are missing required references that BLINQ uses. In the
References tab add click the "add..." button, select the "Browse" tab and browse
to "c:/Program Files/VB LINQ Preview/Bin/". Add references to the following libraries:
- System.Query.dll
- System.Data.DLinq.dll
- System.Xml.XLINQ.dll
However, it would be better those references to be added by default and it should
minimize all investigation and effort for the issues.
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- Figure: BLINQ doesn't have required references and
imports by default
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Allow regeneration of Blinq web pages for schema changes.
Blinq is a one-time website generation tool, which means that successive runs will
overwrite, not modify, output from a previous run. In other words, if you run Blinq
again, it will overwrite the contents and your changes will be lost.?
This can be a nuisance when schema changes are required as simple as a columns being
added, entire table being added, or even a data type change.
Currently there are issues with Timestamp fields that do not allow modifications
to records with Blinq. Our work-around to this bug requires modifications to all
the generated pages that consist of timestamp columns. We cannot afford to rerun
Blinq and redo our changes.
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No open source template to customize to how pages are
generated.
Unlike CodeSmith or NextGen, Blinq has only one way to generate its pages and code
behind files. It would be very useful to be able to make changes to the templates
that Blinq use for generating code so that we would have our own modifications.
This would ultimately mean that we would always be able to regenerate web pages
exactly the way we want them to (i.e. including our own work-arounds for Blinq issues
we have discovered)
our best solution to this is to propose the following:
- Generate one-time code using Blinq
- Create a regex that would search for particular patterns in code that we know will
cause bugs
- Create a find-and-replace batch file or Rule in SSW Code Auditor.
- Run this rule throughout the entire generated Website.
- Make schema changes
- Repeat step 1
- Repeat step 4
Rather than the following:
- Update Blinq Templates
- Regenerate code using Blinq
- Make Schema changes
- Repeat step 2 only
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Links
Forum - Using VB Linq in web
applications
Acknowledgments
Adam Cogan
Lei Xu