Matthieu MEZIL : VB .Net

EDM Designer

Matthieu MEZIL — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:36:00 GMT

I didn’t blog for a (too) long time which is strange for me.

I received some emails asking if I was ok and I found in this a similitude between Scott Guthrie and myself. Lol

So what did I do during my nights this last month? No I don’t sleep more and no I wasn’t in a 6 weeks’ vacation.

In fact, I'm beginning a very funny project: doing an EDM designer! And I thought that it was time I did my first WPF project.

If you look at the code, you will see a VB project. Yes Julie, you read well. This project is used to write an edmx file from my classes and, instead of using serialization, I choose to play with VB9 XML Literal. For all other projects, I use C# of course.

The first version is only a CSDL read-only designer.

I think it makes two interesting points compared to the current MS designer:

The ability to show only some entity types and not all
The ability to show Complex Type

What do I want to add in the following versions?

The ability to add or remove csdl type / property / relation / inheritance (fixing these bugs of course) and to save it into an edmx file
The ability to change csdl type / property properties like the name, the visibility, etc.
The ability to show and change the mapping (including TPC which isn’t supported by current MS designer)
The ability to (re)generate csdl entity types from ssdl entity types. (In current MS designer, it generates it when you add the table / view from the wizard but if you delete your csdl entity type, you have to regenerate it yourself or to delete your ssdl entity type and to use the wizard to add it again. Moreover, for SSDL View, you have nothing to generate the CSDL entity type)
The ability to add SSDL Views or Functions
Integrate it in VS
The ability to save your designer

You can download it here.

As I said previously, I am a WPF beginner so if you have time to audit it and if you have some remarks, advices, criticism, post a comment please.

Reflector IL to C# Bug

Matthieu MEZIL — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:05:00 GMT

I was watching Entity Framework code when I found this code:

switch (this.<>1__state)
{
    case 3:
    case 4:
        break;

    default:
        return;
        try
        {
        }
        finally
        {
            this.d__0.<>m__Finally6();" href="http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet/Default.aspx?Target=code://System.Data.Entity:3.5.0.0:b77a5c561934e089/System.Data.EntityModel.SchemaObjectModel.EntityContainerAssociationSet.d__0/<>m__Finally6()"><>m__Finally6();
        }
        break;
}

Very strange. It was the same with VB.Net. So I watched IL and I undestood that Reflector has a bug.

Indeed the IL was next:

L_0023: ldfld int32 System.Data.EntityModel.SchemaObjectModel.EntityContainerAssociationSet/<get_Ends>d__0::<>1__state
L_0028: stloc.1
L_0029: ldloc.1
L_002a: ldc.i4.3
L_002b: sub
L_002c: switch (L_003a, L_003a)
L_0039: ret
L_003a: leave.s L_0043
L_003c: ldarg.0
L_003d: call instance void System.Data.EntityModel.SchemaObjectModel.EntityContainerAssociationSet/<get_Ends>d__0::<>m__Finally6()
L_0042: endfinally
L_0043: ret
.try L_003a to L_003c finally handler L_003c to L_0043

So C# code should be:

switch (this.<>1__state)
{
    case 3:
    case 4:
        try
        {
        }
        finally
        {
            this.d__0.<>m__Finally6();" href="http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet/Default.aspx?Target=code://System.Data.Entity:3.5.0.0:b77a5c561934e089/System.Data.EntityModel.SchemaObjectModel.EntityContainerAssociationSet.d__0/<>m__Finally6()"><>m__Finally6();
        }
        break;
    default:
        return;
}

What do you think about private and protected?

Matthieu MEZIL — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:28:00 GMT

I think it should be a great thing to have two notions: class private and instance private (and the same for protected).

In my mind, in a lot of case, I shouldn’t be able to do this:

class C1
{
    private int _test = 0;
    public int Test(C1 c1)
    {
        return c1._test;
    }
}
Indeed, when I define _test as (instance) private, I don’t want any different instance than me could access my member.

It’s probably more important for protected because I don’t know my derived class code.

It’s sure that we must keep the class private (or protected) for singleton case for example.

What do you think about this?