Next Release

There are quite a number of minor changes in the upcoming release of Covalentia Version 2.1. In the last few days, I’ve been working on code and database optimizations, naming convention, fixing bugs and GUIs. The new release will also include the source codes of Covalentia.Core project which contains the Data Access Layer and other core components. With the availability of these source codes, developers can see what’s really going on (or nothing’s going on) behind the curtains and perhaps learn a few things (or teach me if I did wrong) about System.Reflection which is heavily being used and how to avoid multiple expensive calls to this class using cache. And more importantly, it should give those greedy hackers less reason to get into our community server. I’ve given everything for FREE. I left nothing. I have nothing left ;)

Updates

• Removal of un-used methods and classes in both Covalentia and Covalentia.Core projects
• Upgrading Table and TableColumn Attributes and Attribute Handler classes, and Table Schema generation especially foreign key support, maximum data length, default value and supports for all possible data type
• New database support for PostgreSQL 8.1 and Oracle 10g (Partial)
• Optimizing and bug-fixing Query Generator class
• Microsoft SQL/MySQL database structure optimizations which include the following:
  • Making data as small as possible for example using smallint and mediumint integer types
  • Declaring columns to be not null
  • Declaring Foreign Keys, Constraints and Indexes
    It is important to note here that since the InnoDB in MySQL database rejects any INSERT or UPDATE operation that attempts to create a foreign key value in a child table without a matching candidate key value in the parent table, only non-zero (or not null) columns may be declared as Foreign Keys.
• Renaming classes and methods to follow Microsoft’s Naming Covention
• Placing C# codes in separate files (for Web Form & Web User Control files) to increase readability
• Using UpdateProgress (Microsoft AJAX) to avoid pages from freezing upon post-back, especially during switching Tabs and Sub-Tabs back and forth
• Applying styles, themes and skins
• Upgrading Tabs and Sub-Tabs for better performance and look
• Better documentations for codes, tooltips and help (partial – this is a lot of work)

To Dos

• Database supports for PostgreSQL 8.1 and Oracle 10g
• Microsoft AJAX 1.0
• A new release for Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition

As for our community server, our hope to bring it online last week was dashed. The server is infected with all kinds of spy-wares and ad-wares. We’re in the process of removing them and we’ll let you know once it’s stable. Somebody actually unplugged the firewall and chaos reigned for a while. It's a war. We eventually managed to put a stop to it but not without casualty on our side. But, we’ll continue to survive ;)