Data Access Menu – panel discussion video now online

14 May 2009

http://www.msteched.com/online/view.aspx?tid=fa50fd2a-05f3-41d9-aaa6-110daea9dce2

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On Wednesday, I participated on a panel that discussed data access options.  We started out with Richard Campbell throwing in Entity Framework.  The panel was full of architect-level folks, and none of us are comfortable using it yet, but we are all keeping an eye on it.  We discussed O/R Mappers (I plugged NHibernate), but we mostly discussed architecture.  We all agreed on keeping data access out of the way and off to the side.  Wrapping tools is always good, and we all agreed that it is bad to couple our core objects to any data access concern.

We all come from the perspective of line-of-business applications.  10-table wonders (small apps) have different constraints, but the larger, longer-lived apps require more.

I enjoyed the talk much more than the Pros and Cons of Stored Procedures, which was heavily focused on SQL Server and is suited for a DBA developer audience, but this panel fully explored the broader options.

The other panelists were:

Kent Alstad

Stephen Forte

Paul Sheriff

Rocky Lhotka

Richard Campbell

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Comments

Jason said on 5.15.2009 at 9:43 AM

I liked this discussion. My favorite comment:

"ultra scale apps use simple concepts while small apps use complex concepts." I believe the reason is that that cost of the complexity is low in a small app. Risk is increased by using complexity, but reduced by the size of the project. If things do go horribly wrong, you can quickly remove the complexity because the project is small.

It was also mentioned the differences between tactile vs strategic tools. MS definitely pushes tactile. And for (too) many people once the RAD cycle is complete, why go back and change the code... it "works".

My only disappointment... 3 audience members (on camera) :( Too my devs are content with the status quo.

Thank you for the great presentation.

Nick said on 5.15.2009 at 3:51 PM

Much of the conversation was based on the false premise that RAD and good architecture and mutually exclusive. Django/RoR and now Fluent NHibernate demonstrate that you can have your cake and eat it too.