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Archive for January, 2009

Screencast: Getting started with LightSpeed

Tagged as LightSpeed, Screencast

One of the challenges with LightSpeed is that end users install it, create a model and then wonder what they need to do next to actually start using their LightSpeed domain models. It’s a query that we’re working hard to resolve by improving the first time experience. We think we have been doing that consistently with every release – improved help files, code generation tools and now we have made available a simple “Getting started with LightSpeed” screencast.

The screencast walks through:

• Creating a model using the LightSpeed Designer for Visual Studio 2008
• Configuring LightSpeed in a simple manner using your applications .config file
• What a LightSpeed Context is, how it relates to a Unit Of Work
• Writing CRUD style queries

It is designed as an introduction – seasoned LightSpeed users probably won’t learn anything new but we do hope it’s helpful for those who have decided to give LightSpeed a try and want to get going fast. How fast? The video is 11 minutes long.

Watch getting started with LightSpeed (Flash, streamed)
Download getting started with LightSpeed for local viewing (WMV, 16 MB)

Any feedback is appreciated – if you can think of anything else that we can do to make learning LightSpeed easier then drop us a comment!

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Posted by John-Daniel Trask on 11 January 2009

SimpleDB Managment Tools screencast

Tagged as Screencast, SimpleDB Management Tools, Visual Studio

With SimpleDB Management Tools newly released we decided it would be helpful to those who are interested in it to see it in action. I have created a short 3 minute screencast providing an overview of common functions:

• Connecting to a new SimpleDB instance inside Visual Studio 2008
• Managing domains
• Querying data both with Amazon query syntax and SQL-like SELECT syntax
• Editing and deleting data
• Working with attributes

View the screencast of getting started with SimpleDB Management Tools.

As always, we appreciate feedback on this – is there anything else you would like to see? something missing? Let us know in the comments :-)

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Posted by John-Daniel Trask on 8 January 2009

SimpleDB Management Tools Released

Tagged as General, Products, SimpleDB Management Tools

With the present buzz around cloud computing, it’s proved a timely moment for Amazon’s SimpleDB database service to come out of beta. And since it’s free for low-volume usage there’s been a big uptick of interest in SimpleDB. However, although Amazon provide APIs and libraries for programming against SimpleDB, they don’t provide any off the shelf tools for quickly managing or viewing your SimpleDB data.

We’re therefore pleased to announce the release of SimpleDB Management Tools, a Visual Studio add-in that you can use to manage your Amazon SimpleDB domains and data from within VS2008.

Using SimpleDB Management Tools, you can create and delete domains, view the contents of your domains, run queries and edit and save data, using the kind of visual interface familiar from traditional databases such as SQL Server or MySQL. SimpleDB Management Tools installs itself as a data provider in Server Explorer, from where you can navigate your domains and launch query windows. Click here to find out more.

SimpleDB Management Tools also integrates with LightSpeed so you can drag SimpleDB domains from Server Explorer onto your model just as you can with any other database. (You’ll need a recent nightly of LightSpeed for this as we have added native SimpleDB support from LightSpeed!)

There’s a free version of SimpleDB Management Tools available. The free version only allows you to view or edit the first 20 results of a query, but is otherwise fully functional and is not time-restricted. Please note that you’ll need Visual Studio 2008 Standard edition or above. Purchasing a license is inexpensive at only $29 per seat and is available immediately from the secure Mindscape store.

Take it out for a spin today and let us know what you think!

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Posted by John-Daniel Trask on 7 January 2009

What’s coming in 2009 from Mindscape?

Tagged as LightSpeed, News, Products, Visual Studio, WPF Elements, WPF Property Grid

Happy new year everybody, I hope you’ve all had a fantastic break and recharge over the last couple of weeks. We have returned energized and ready to bring a slew of new products and enhancements to our line up.

Amazon SimpleDB Love

SimpleDB went into public beta late last year and people have been playing with it to work out what cool things they can do with it. Of course we thought that with the rising interest in “the cloud” that adding support for SimpleDB to LightSpeed would be a nice first step. If you’re interested in using the only .NET O/R Mapper that supports SimpleDB then you can get the latest nightly which already supports SimpleDB! Grab the latest nightly from the nightly build page.

But wait, there’s more!

As part of Ivan exploring SimpleDB we rapidly found that we needed to build some things to make it easier for us to work with SimpleDB. Not out the door yet but coming very soon, we will ship a SimpleDB add-in for Visual Studio which will enable you to manage your SimpleDB domains and data in a fashion similar to SQL Management Studio, and of course to create LightSpeed models from your SimpleDB domains.

WPF goodies

Adding to our existing line up of the WPF Property Grid and WPF Elements we will be significantly enhancing our WPF product line up in in the first half of 2009.

LightSpeed 2.2

LightSpeed is continuing to evolve and it will be an exciting year for what we have planned for LightSpeed. LightSpeed 2.2 will be shipping shortly and includes several major features:

• Stored procedure support
• Dynamic data support
• SimpleDB database support
• Many more smaller enhancements

Of course all of these will be available in the nightly builds if you want to get your hands on them early – many already are!

Anything else?

We have other plans for later in the year however our best source of inspiration around new products and enhancements is you – our excellent geek audience. What would you love to see delivered in 2009?

Here’s to making 2009 a huge year!

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Posted by John-Daniel Trask on 4 January 2009